Worth Fighting For
by Kathryn Claire O'Connor
Summary: "Why did you buy us from the gatherers?" "I don't know," Rowan answered, but this time he was lying. He did know; he just didn't want to say it. He knew what the real chances were of getting Rhine back, and he had wanted to know that he had saved someone from that horrible gray truck and everything that came with it, even if that person couldn't be his own twin sister. *AU*
1. Chapter 1

Rowan Ellery was fuming; he knew that the anger was simply rolling off of him in waves as he drove home through the decaying streets of the once-glorious city of New York. He had gotten to work earlier in the morning, only to find out that he had been replaced, and for no other reason than that the man who had stolen his job had known how to spin a good sob story, about his young wife's recent death and being left alone to take care of their two tiny children.

Everyone's wife was young and dying! Everywhere you looked in this godforsaken city, there were orphans crawling about! Why was this man so special? His wife was already dead! Rowan and his sister, Rhine, were not! Or at least not yet; thanks to his currently unemployed position, that might be swift in changing, though.

As it was, he had been angry enough to steal the delivery truck that he had been using just for the pleasure of it. He would return it later, once he had taken it for a drive long enough to cool down over this another one of life's injustices.

Rowan stalled about ten yards away from his parents' house – the place where he and his sister still stayed in the basement. He was not looking forward to telling his twin what had happened to his job, and so he stayed where he was for a few minutes, allowing himself to ponder the issue of how exactly he should break the news.

As he watched through the windshield – for he was always watching, even when he was thinking about something else – he saw his sister slip out of the house. His brow furrowed. Why would she be out right now, going into the outdoors without him to watch over her? He took a step forward, intent on getting answers to those questions, and only then did he notice her odd behavior. She was nervous, starting out at a jog, and then breaking into what was almost a run, and always looking over her shoulder as she went. Well, at least she was conscious of the fact that she shouldn't be out and about alone.

Rowan decided that for once it would be alright to keep his distance, but follow her all the same just to make sure that she stayed safe and to see what would happen.

He would always regret that one mistake.

She never saw him behind her, and by the time that he realized that she was in trouble it was too late. By the time he finally got inside the building that she had entered, the gray truck was already locked and backing out of the building. No amount of pounding on the side of the vehicle or screaming would get it open. All the noise that he made was drowned out times at least ten by the noise of the girls inside of the truck. And one of those girls was Rhine, his twin sister, the only person that he had left in this world.

He had to get her out.

Rowan darted back to the delivery truck, swinging up into the driver's seat and flooring it as he followed that horrid Gatherer's truck.

The first time that he got right beside that vehicle was when he got his first glimpse of what he was dealing with. Guns, tasers, and cans of gas littered the back seat of the truck, sending out a clear but ominous message that sent ice into his very bone marrow.

Rowan took a deep breath and sat back in his seat, realizing that he was simply going to have to bide his time; wait until the Gatherers stopped on their own and then he could get a better look at that truck see about getting his sister out of there.

So he drove, following them at a distance. The first time they stopped – after not even an hour of driving – Rowan pulled over on the side of the road and watched for a moment to try and figure out what they were doing. Although both men left the cab of the truck, they did so only to go around to the back, blotting out any hope of his being able to even examine the truck up close.

He watched, feeling a sickening wave of disgust as he realized what was happening. The two gatherers were approached by a third man, also wearing a gray coat. This third man was herding three bound and more than likely drugged teenage girls – sisters, if Rowan had to guess – in front of him. The three men spoke for a minute before one of the men who had been driving the truck gave the third guy a few dollars from out of his coat pocket. Third guy counted the bills and looked at his two cohorts in disgust. An argument that Rowan couldn't hear, full of angry gestures and eyes, ensued. Eventually the third man stalked away with his paltry earnings while the other two men unlocked and opened the back of their truck – _Run, Rhine; get out of there! _– and shoved the three willowy brunettes that they had just acquired in with the other girls.

Just like that, they were on the road again with Rowan still trailing them every step of the way. Within another couple of hours, the gathers stopped one more time and picked up two more girls in the same way that they had acquired the trio of brunettes, and then they were on their way again. Eventually, Rowan lost track of the miles, the hours, he spent on that road following those horrible men and their gray vehicle. The scenery outside of his deliver truck changed over time into something warm and so much more alive than New York City, and yet he didn't even notice.

Finally, the gray truck pulled off of the highway and parked. Rowan did the same thing, staying at such a spot that he could still see what was going on without anyone noticing that he was there. As he watched, the gatherers got out again, but this time the man that they met was different – wealthy – and this second generation had none of the familiar markings of a gatherer. He realized then that they had reached their destination at last.

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**At this point I have eleven chapters of this story written and I'm not sure that the story's even a third of the way finished, so hopefully you guys are interested! It does get better! Reviews make my day, if you feel so inclined! Thanks!:)**


	2. Chapter 2

Moving slowly so as to be as silent as possible, Rowan got out of his delivery truck and crept as close as he dared, hiding behind a large, leafy tree. Again, he could see through the leaves to them, but they couldn't see him.

Eye riveted upon the scene unfolding before him, Rowan saw the gatherers prod the fifteen frightened, squinting girls from the back of the truck and line them up for the rich man's inspection. After he had apparently made his choices, twelve girls were herded back into the truck and the other three were guided into a limousine, but Rowan wasn't close enough to see which of the two groups Rhine was in as the limousines whipped around and sped away.

And that was when he heard the first gunshot go off in the back of that gray truck.

Rowan lost it, shouting his objection as he charged thoughtlessly up to the man in gray that remained outside of the truck, keeping watch while his partner shot the girls inside the truck.

"Wait!" Rowan cried, grabbing the man's arm. "You have to let me see the girls inside your truck! My sister's in there!"

The bearded first generation snarled, ripping his arm out of Rowan's grasp. "If you want to see in there so bad, it's going to cost you."

Rowan desperately dug around in his pocket, feeling the bills that his former boss had given him earlier in the day – or was it yesterday? He had no idea how much time had passed; it seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Here," Rowan shoved a dollar into the man's hand, shaking as a second gunshot exploded.

The man in gray raised his eyebrows at the single dollar, and for a moment Rowan thought he was going to demand more, but he didn't. Instead he turned and opened the back of the truck and snapped at his partner to "get out here for a second."

Looking confused, the younger man - a second generation – in the truck obliged, jumping down and stirring up a cloud of dust as his feet hit the ground.

"This kid wants to take a look at the girls."

"You find one you want," the man with the gun said. "You gotta buy her, got it?"

Rowan gulped, knowing full well that there was no way that he could afford to buy Rhine back with what his boss had given him. He nodded anyway and climbed into the back of the truck.

He liked to think of himself as a hardened young man, but his first step in the back of that truck was almost his undoing. Hearing the splashing noise under his shoe, he looked down to see that he had stepped in a puddle of blood, seeping from the head of a dead raven-haired girl who could've been no older than fourteen. A shudder coursed through his body as he forced his gaze back up to the live girls; conditioning himself so that he wouldn't see the girls' faces, just see that they weren't his sister.

He scanned the remaining ten girls multiple times, his panic building as he realized the truth. She wasn't here!

Rowan stumbled, hitting the metal wall of the interior of the truck as he fought against panic and tears. She was in that limousine now; she was… gone. The world began to buzz inside of his ears as his vision swam.

"Rhine," he whispered.

His voice seemed to fill the crowded, miserable cavern of the trailer of the truck, and brought life into the girls nearest him. From the floor where she sat huddled beside another girl, one of the girls brought her hand up to wrap around his fingers.

As the touch drew him back into consciousness, the brunette whispered, "Jenna," with tears in her glassy blue eyes – as if she was trying to comfort him.

Jenna?

Rowan looked down at the girl as she and her sister stared back up at him with luminous eyes. Even though Rowan hadn't been close enough to see their faces when the deal was being struck, Rowan knew that these two sisters were two of the three that he had seen the three gatherers haggling over. Was their sister also in that limousine with Rhine?

Swallowing past his tears and panic, Rowan looked around the truck at the ten broken but breathing girls before his gaze fell to the two bodies that the gatherer had already shot. A new idea struck him, and even though he knew it was stupid to care – far, far too sentimental – he had the thought that even if he never was able to find Rhine – and try he would – he shouldn't just leave these others here without trying to do something to save them.

Although it went against everything that he had ever done since his parents' deaths, Rowan squeezed the brunette's hand before releasing it and jumping back out of the truck, suddenly looking all business.

He turned to the gatherers, demanding, "Ten dollars for the remaining ten girls."

The gatherers laughed in his face, and the bearded one – he was obviously the guy in charge – instantly said, "No deal."

"Why not?" Rowan asked coolly. "That's ten dollars more than you would've made. Aren't you just going to put bullets in their brains anyway? How does that benefit you? Ten dollars would more than pay for the price of those bullets, and we all know it. A profit is a profit no matter how much it is." He saw something in the men's faces shifting, so he added, "Besides, that's all you paid your friends for the five girls you picked up, right? A dollar each? That's still five dollars profit plus whatever outrageous amount our pal with the limousine paid you for the three he took."

"Fine," the guy with the beard eventually snarled. "Shut up and get them out of my truck." Rowan turned to do as he had been ordered, but he found himself facing the barrel of the gun that had already shot two of the girls. "After we get our money."

Rowan fished a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and shoved it into one of the gatherers' hands. Then he turned to look back at the ten girls in the truck, already wondering what he had just done.

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	3. Chapter 3

"Alright," Rowan called out briskly. "Everybody up and out. Let's go."

The girls stirred slowly, blinking blearily and muttering incoherently. Most of them were crying. Sighing, Rowan waited on the ground at the edge of the truck, trying to be gentle despite his brisk tone as – after the first one almost fell when leaving the truck – he helped the girls out of the truck one by one. At length, the ten girls were huddled around him and the truck contained nothing but the two corpses.

"Nice doing business with you, gentlemen," Rowan nodded curtly, allowing a barely noticeable thread of sarcasm into his voice as he gathered the ten girls in front of him and steered them towards his stolen delivery truck.

He was already losing serious time in catching up with that limo, and now he had just suddenly dropped ten more girls onto his own plate. What had he been thinking? The eleven teenagers stood by the rusted, white truck, watching as the gatherers got back into their vehicle and drove away, spitting gravel as they went back the way they had come.

"Alright," Rowan said tiredly, scrubbing a hand along the length of his face as he thought. He couldn't fit anymore that five people in the bed of his truck. "I need six people to sit in the bed of the truck."

Four girls slowly made their way to the open bed of his vehicle and the two brunette started to go back there as well.

Rowan grabbed the shoulder of one of them, saying swiftly, "Not you two."

The duo jumped when he touched one of them, but they silently obeyed, staying by his side as two other girls went instead.

"Do any of you have families that you want to go back to?" Rowan asked as he watched six of the girls get into the back of the truck, making sure that they didn't stumble too much.

He was almost startled when, after a little thought on the part of some, eight of the girls shook their heads. The two sisters stayed silent and motionless at his side.

He cursed himself for not asking the gatherers this question, before he inquired of the girls, "Do any of you know where we are?"

Again, they all shook their heads, slowly seeming to come out of their drugged stupors.

"Then how do you feel about going on a road trip with me? Or at least until we get to the nearest city?"

No one said anything, but they didn't object, so Rowan took that as a mass agreement.

"Great!" He clapped his hands together once before he turned his attention to getting on the road.

He helped three girls into the back bench seat of the delivery truck's cab and then handed the older two of the brunette sisters into the passenger seat of the truck before getting into the driver's seat. Going as quickly as he dared with six – _Six! What was I thinking?! _– girls in the bed of the truck, he went the same way that the limousine had, refusing to think about what he would do once he got to the point where he didn't know which route the plush vehicle had taken. It was a point that he would reach much sooner than he would've liked.

"What's your name?" he asked as he pulled out onto the road, glancing at the girl riding shotgun.

"Ella Bloom," the girl murmured, her voice sounding rusty.

Bloom… something bright and full of promise, of life. Nothing in this world was blooming anymore.

"You're what – seventeen, sixteen?"

The girl – Ella – nodded, "Sixteen."

"Are you sisters?" Rowan asked, glancing in the rearview mirror to address the girl in question who was sitting in timid silence in the back.

Both brunettes nodded.

"She's Ava," Ella offered. "Fifteen."

Rowan waited a beat, knowing that he needed to know if his hunch was correct, but not sure if he really wanted the knowledge, before he asked, "Who's Jenna?"

Ava emitted a strangled gasp as tears began to trail down her cheeks once again.

"Our sister," Ella said.

"She's in the limo?" Rowan asked without missing a beat.

Ella nodded forlornly, her gaze once again drifting out the window. "Is that where we're going?" she asked softly. "After the limo?"

"That's the idea," Rowan muttered, feeling frustrated as he realized that he already had no idea where to go.

He slammed both palms against the steering wheel, swearing viciously. All four of the girls in the cab of the truck jumped in surprise, and Rowan realized all over again just how careful he probably needed to be around these cracked and frightened girls. The past twenty-four hours had, after all, probably been some of the worst, most terrifying times in their lives. All things considered, he could relate to that.

Quickly regaining her composure, Ella asked softly, "Who are you?"

"Rowan Ellery," he answered, tone sharper then he wished it would be, but he couldn't seem to stop it at the moment. He pulled over onto the side of the road, adding, "I'm sixteen."

He heard Ella swallow as he leaned over and rested his blonde forehead on the steering wheel. She laid a careful hand on his shoulder, asking softly, "Your sister is in that limo too, isn't she?"

Rowan nodded, just barely, feeling tears once again pricking at the back of his eyes. No, absolutely not. As a general rule, he didn't cry – ever – but he absolutely _could not _cry right now.

A new voice came from the bench seat of the truck, asking suspiciously, "What are you going to do with us, Rowan Ellery?"

Rowan sat up, twisting around in his seat to look into the wary green eyes of a redhead who he would guess to be around eighteen. If her apparel was any indication, she was a prostitute – or at least she had been before the gatherers had grabbed her.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "You're your own person. I guess that once we find a real place to stop, you can do whatever you want. Heck, we're parked; you can leave now if you want."

"So why did you buy us from the gatherers?" the other girl asked, a thirteen year old with slanted eyes and dark skin.

"I don't know," Rowan answered again, but this time he was lying. He did know; he just didn't want to say it.

He knew what the real chances were of getting Rhine back, and he had wanted to know that he had saved someone from that horrible gray truck and everything that came with it, even if that person couldn't be his own twin sister.

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	4. Chapter 4

"So, what do we do now?" Ella asked, sounding as defeated as Rowan felt.

He looked over at her, feeling a sort of respect for her well up, even kinship with this stranger. She was going through everything that he was, plus more, and yet she seemed to be doing a better job of holding herself together then he was. Momentarily, he wondered if she realized that it was her grabbing his hand that had essentially saved the ten girls.

Rowan looked down at the clock on the dashboard. It had been a full twenty-four hours since he had left his jobsite back in New York City, and he hadn't eaten or slept since before then. He could only assume that the same went for all of the girls that he was with. Suddenly he realized that he was, in fact, very tired and just as hungry. With that thought in mind, he put the truck back into drive and got back on the road.

"I guess we find a town."

For the next hour they drove in silence until they stumbled upon a small village square. A ramshackle hotel, a tiny restaurant, a long-forsaken and delapidated church building, a grimy gas station, and a small grocery store all sat in the middle of nowhere, but it was all that Rowan and his band of girls needed for the moment.

"Alright," Rowan called, opening his vehicle door and climbing out of the truck. "Everybody out!" He stretched and bent around, trying to work the tightness out of his muscles and emotions before he offered to the group, "Do what you want, but if you want food, this is the only time I'll buy it for you at this stop if you come now. I'm staying here for awhile to rest up; the rest of you can do whatever you want if you can find a ride out of here."

The girls scrambled out of the truck around him, going various ways in the village square, some in groups, others on their own, but mostly into the restaurant.

Ella came up to him, seeming to step as carefully as ever, with Ava right behind her. Despite their haggard and drugged wariness, they really were beautiful. If their sister looked anything like them, Rowan could understand why she had been chosen.

He straightened up and looked Ella in the eye since it was obvious that she had something that she wanted to say. "Yeah?"

"Are you going to keep looking for your sister?" she asked.

Rowan nodded instantly, "For as long as it takes."

"Where your sister is, there's Jenna, right?"

"Probably," Rowan shrugged, seeing where this was going.

"Then we want to go with you."

His gaze flickered between the two sisters – one was simply shorter and paler than the other; they looked just as alike as he and Rhine did, and one's expression was still fearful while the other's held a fierce determination that matched the one inside of him – before he nodded.

"Okay," he said simply.

Ella nodded, and he thought he saw a flicker of a smile on her face before she wrapped an arm around Ava's shoulders and the three of them headed into the restaurant. Inside, the elderly proprietor was looking a little frazzled at this sudden influx of humanity into her establishment. One of the girls that had sat in the back of the truck had found a seat across from the one of the few people who had been in the place before they had gotten there – a well-off first generation who was currently undressing the teenager with his eyes. The scene made Rowan's skin crawl, but it seemed not to bother the girl who apparently knew exactly what she was doing and what she wanted. It looked like the man had already bought her meal for her, and Rowan supposed that he should probably be grateful for the fact that it meant one more person off of the tab that this was going to ring up. Forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand, Rowan made his way to the front of the group of girls, informing the woman behind the counter that he was buying whatever the girls ordered.

The proprietress looked him up and down, asking, "Are these all your wives or something?"

"Just friends," Rowan answered with a tight smile, forcing himself to be civil.

"Well, I'll tell you what: if a couple of your friends know how to cook and want to get back here to help me, it'll get you all your food faster. I've been looking for some help, so I might even let one of them stick around here permanently."

A couple of the girls nearest the woman heard her and quickly ducked behind the counter.

The girls all ate ravenously, and by the end of the meal, Rowan was cringing as he thought of how much all of this was going to cost him. He hated himself for the fact that it seemed not to matter so much when he saw how much better and happier the girls looked afterwards, though, and how very grateful they were for the simple meal.

By the time they stood up as a group to leave the restaurant, Rowan only counted eight girls still with him. Scanning the parking lot outside the restaurant, he saw that the one girl was leaving with the first-generation that she had sat with.

_Have a happy marriage, sweetheart,_ he thought drily.

The other unaccounted for girl came up to him just then and thanked him for helping her before explaining that the restaurant owner had offered her a place to stay in return for her working in the restaurant and in the woman's home. So Rowan gathered the remaining girls of his waning yet still large group and they headed towards the hotel, all more than willing to sleep for awhile.

When he saw the hotel rates, though, Rowan stifled a groan, instantly realizing that he, for one, would be sleeping in the cab of the delivery truck. Even if the girls doubled up rooms, that was still more then he could afford if he was going to have to live on the road to find Rhine… and Jenna, apparently.

The human being in him – practically buried until it had suddenly decided to stick its head out today – hated to ask it of any of the girls, but he knew he was going to have to, so he opted to ask Ella and Ava first, figuring that they would be the most understanding of the situation.

He picked Ava's and Ella's matching jeweled hair baubles out of the gaggle of girls and approached, laying a hand on Ava's shoulder blade. She jumped which got Ella's attention as well and the girls turned to him.

He explained his thoughts to them, and they agreed easily. A couple of other girls overheard as well and offered to nap in the bed of the truck. "We'll be like sun-bathing and sleeping at the same time," the young Asian girl who had sat in the cab – Lei – offered with a small grin as she looped arms with the other girl who had volunteered to camp out there, a sixteen year old with caramel-colored hair who's name Rowan had yet to catch.

"If you really want to, then thanks," Rowan said, feeling genuinely grateful for these girls' willingness to cooperate.

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	5. Chapter 5

A few minutes later, Rowan had paid the bill for no more than two hotel rooms and settled with the other four girls in the truck. He had reclined the driver's seat back as far as it would go, and beside him, Ella had done the same thing, leaving Ava to lie down across the bench seat. Yet he couldn't sleep. Regardless of the fact that he was so tired that he knew driving would've been made dangerous, he wanted to be on the road looking for Rhine, doing something, _anything_, to get his sister back.

"Brides are usually safe, right?"

The words – whispered so as not to wake Ava – startled him as they floated into the still air of the truck cab, full of the words that Ella couldn't say. He turned his head to look at her, finding her blue eyes staring straight back at him with just as desperate a look as she had worn while still inside the gatherer's truck.

Rowan swallowed, paused, nodded.

Ella smiled softly, but he saw that it was simply in hope that he wouldn't notice the tears swimming in her eyes. She knew the truth. She knew that he had no idea.

Reaching across the console, Ella once again grasped his fingertips, and this time he didn't pull away as she whispered, "I hope so too."

Eventually, the two of them drifted off into a light sleep where he dreamed of Rhine, the dead girls in the gatherer's truck, lilies blooming, and endless, endless gray.

Hours later, feeling much better physically, Rowan went back into the restaurant and bought another meal's worth of food for nine people, stowing it away under the truck's seats before he roused Ava and the girls in the hotel and gathered them back into the truck. He let Ella, Lei, and Lei's new "sun-bathing" friend sleep where they were. Two girls clambered into the back of the truck with them, obligingly trying to be quiet, and two more climbed into the cab. The same redhead as earlier sat down on one side of Ava, and a lanky but pregnant – _pregnant?! – _blonde who had to be nineteen sat on her other side.

When he had gone to buy the second round of meals, Rowan had spoken with the proprietress long enough to find out that they were in the state of Florida – near Tallahassee, Florida, to be exact – and that there were a number of rich families who lived on the opposite side of the state, south, along the coast. The woman had stood fast to the opinion that would be the best place for him to look for Rhine if the sale of a bride was involved.

So Rowan set his course south, and away they went. He drove overnight, caring about the fact that he was making the girls sleep in the truck – particularly the mother-to-be, Zoe – but he didn't care enough to stop. He was too focused on finding Rhine for that. Ella seemed to share his fervor, and she took it upon herself to stay up with him and hold conversation – or at least let him listen to her rambling – so that he could stay awake.

Dawn was coming up the next morning when the redhead woke up – Rowan had learned that her name was Payton – and convinced them to stop in a town that they were passing through called Perry. Though he was already frustrated by the number of stops that they had made overnight for one of the girls or another, he saw the wisdom in what he was saying and stopped in the parking lot of a gas station.

The girls slowly began to stir as he got out of the driver's seat; coming to themselves with mumbles and moans over aching muscles. Perry was quite a bit bigger than the village from the day before, so Rowan told them he would hand out food in ten minutes and to stay nearby if they intended to continue on with him after this stop and then went into the gas station, paying for gas for the truck before he went back out and pumped it. Once the girls regrouped around the truck, he and one of the younger girls, a fourteen year old blonde named Heidi, handed out the food that he had bought the evening before.

He and Ella needed sleep like they needed nothing else, though, and the sixteen year old with caramel-colored hair – Cambria – saw that, offering, "I know how to drive, if you want me to take the wheel for a little while. Just tell me where we're headed."

Rowan surveyed her for a second before deciding that she could trust her to do as she'd offered. "Miami, best as I can figure," he said, dropping the key into her hand.

She nodded, looking entirely capable of the task that he had given her.

"Okay, everybody!" Rowan called out. "Let's get loaded back up!"

Although they had only been out of the truck an hour, and it was unlikely that anyone was missing, Rowan did a headcount anyway. Cambria got in the driver's seat and Ella slid in on the bench seat, Ava took what for her would be a brave step and separated from her sister, opting to sit in the back beside Lei so that Zoe could sit in the passenger seat. Jolie and Heidi got in the truck bed as well, and… that was all he saw.

Someone was missing, he realized, scanning the girls again and then the parking lot for the telling red hair.

"Where's Payton?" Rowan asked the girls sitting in the bed of the truck.

Jolie sighed, tucking her black hair behind her ear as she answered, "I saw her take off with some guy about fifteen minutes ago. I thought that you knew." She rolled her eyes, offering, "Old habits dying hard, I guess."

Rowan sighed, pursing his lips as his gaze swept the parking lot again. He didn't like the idea of leaving her behind if she hadn't meant to permanently separate herself from the group, but something told him that she had. She had been the worst tempered girl to follow him out of the village yesterday, and Jolie was right – sometimes old habits just died hard, or didn't die at all, for that matter.

"Alright," Rowan decided, rubbing his eyes. "That's her choice; let's get going."

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	6. Chapter 6

Rowan opened one of the side doors to the backseat of the truck and instantly froze. Ella was already asleep inside; she hadn't even buckled up, which meant that she was lying across the whole length of the bench seat.

"You know what? I think I'll sit in the bed with the others."

"You can just put her head in your lap, you know," Zoe spoke up, looking at him in the rearview mirror. "I don't think she'd mind. I'm pretty sure she's used to guys doing a lot worse than that."

He looked at the blonde's eyes in the mirror, trying to figure out what she meant. Oh. Ella and Ava were prostitutes too.

He climbed in and shut the truck door behind himself without a word, positioning Ella as Zoe had suggested. Cambria started the truck and they were on the road, heading south again. Once he got used to the warm dead weight of Ella's head in his lap, he really didn't mind as much as he had thought that he would, and he wasn't sure what he thought of the fact that he didn't care.

It didn't take long for him to drift off to sleep, surrounded by the faded scent of her jasmine perfume and the feel of his hand tangled in her dark hair.

Maybe minutes or maybe hours afterward, Rowan awoke to the sound of someone asking anxiously, "Right now? Already? Are you sure? You're absolutely, positively sure?"

He fought his way out of his murky, sleep-induced haze while trying to place the voice. Cambria.

And a strangled, "Yes," preceding a sharp gasp. Zoe. "We have to stop… please! Oh, stop… It hurts!"

Wait a second… Zoe. There was something important about Zoe. Something was wrong with Zoe.

Zoe! Her baby!

The blonde's next pained cry had Rowan fully awake, and had he not been already, he would've woken when Cambria loudly said his name.

"I'm up; I'm here!" Rowan said, scrambling to get a better assessment of the situation.

They were on a side road, in the middle of freaking nowhere, and Zoe appeared to be very much in labor.

His movement and Zoe's and Cambria's noise woke Ella as Cambria pulled the truck over down an overgrown side road. He scrambled out of the truck before it was even in park, and from the truck bed, Lei instantly asked, "What's going on?"

"I think Zoe's in labor," Rowan gasped, not thinking to hide his panic.

"I _know _I am!" Zoe screamed.

Cambria called out, "Her water just broke!"

"I've got it; I know what to do," Jolie said, stepping around the other girls' legs to get out of the bed of the truck.

"Are you sure?" Rowan asked.

Jolie looked over her shoulder at him as she approached the passenger seat of the truck, already rolling up her sleeves. "My mother was a midwife before the virus took her when I was seven. I remember some of what she showed me, and, anyway, I'm the best you've got."

Rowan decided that he couldn't contest that. He climbed into the bed of the truck to sit down beside Ava with Heidi and Lei across from them as Ella, Cambria, and Jolie all crowded around Zoe in the front of the truck. The three younger girls all looked pale and worried as they listened to the sounds coming from the cab of the truck.

"Is Zoe going to be alright?" Ava asked him in a small voice, quite possibly saying the first words that she had spoken since he had lifted her down from the gatherers truck.

"Sure," Rowan said lightly laying a hand on her forearm for emphasis while hoping that he was being convincing enough.

Another scream split the air and Ava curled into herself while Heidi and Lei tensed as well. Rowan chewed in his lip, trying to decide what to do. The three younger girls obviously didn't want to be here, and he wasn't sure that they needed to hear this anyway. They had been traumatized quiet enough over the past two days without adding this to it.

"Wait here, okay?" Rowan ordered, climbing over Ava and jumping out of the truck bed. "Ella?" he said, daring to walk over to the girl in question.

"Yeah?" she asked, glancing back at him.

"Do you think that you four would be safe here if I took Ava, Lei, and Heidi on a walk? They're kind of…stressed."

He wasn't about to admit that he was just as eager to be somewhere else, anywhere else, during this.

"Yes, by all means, get them out of here! I'll come and find you when we're done here."

Rowan didn't need to be told twice.

"Come on, girls," he said, going to the back of the truck. "Let's go for a walk."

The trio seemed as eager to get away as he was, and soon they were making their way aimlessly along the road. Ava, whom Rowan had decided by now was one of the most timid people that he had ever met, had grasped his hand when she had climbed down from the truck, and she hadn't let go yet. Considering the sort of life that she and her two sisters seemed to have had before the gatherers, something told Rowan that she had already seen more – gone through more – then she ought to have, yet she still seemed so young. Losing Jenna in such a traumatic way must have knocked the confidence out of her, he decided.

"Hey, what's that?" Heidi asked, pointing to a decrepit and long-abandoned park on the other side of the street.

"Do you want to go check it out?" Rowan asked, forcing himself to sound more amicable then he felt.

"Yeah!" Lei cried, racing Heidi across the road.

"You're not going to race them?" Rowan asked, looking down at Ava.

There was only a year between them, and yet she was almost as tiny as Lei, and seemed just as young.

Ava shook her head, asking softly, "Is Zoe's baby going to be okay?"

Rowan paused, mulling over his answer – over the fact that he didn't even know the real answer – before he said, "Sure."

"That's what you told me earlier," she said, looking him in the eye, suddenly being fearlessly frank with him. "You don't know, do you?"

Something in her tone or her expression made him want to be honest with her, so he said, "No, Ava, I don't know."

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	7. Chapter 7

**I think that this chapter is where it really hit me that I wasn't always going to be the one writing this story, that sometimes these girls were just going to tell me who they were and what they were going to do. That happened in the last chapter with Jolie, who I really had pegged as just a pretty Goth girl - but no; instead she gets up and turns herself into Florence Nightingale! And it happens later too - I have like NO control over Cambria at all, and she's not turning out to be who I wanted her to. I had no idea about what Cambria says about Lei in the next chapter either, just so you know, nor was(SPOILER ALERT) Heidi supposed to turn out the way she eventually does in later chapters. Each of these girls really seem to be their own person, and they surprise me as much as they do anyone else. But I really am enjoying getting to know them all. Alright I'll step away from my podium and let you read the story now.:)**

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"Life's funny like that, huh?" Ava asked, swinging their intertwined hands between them as they walked towards the park.

"What do you mean?" Rowan asked, looking over at the fifteen year old as she looked at the ground.

"Well, my mother had three girls without a problem while she was working in a brothel. Then, later, when I got pregnant, I lost my babies both times."

Rowan stopped in his tracks, repeating, "You've been pregnant?"

"Twice," Ava shrugged, looking at her feet. "It's an occupational hazard. I miscarried once, and the other was born too early to survive for more than a week."

"Oh, wow… Ava…"

She shook her head, warding off whatever he had been going to say to her. "Sometimes," she murmured. "I think that it was better for them that way, to not have to live in…" she lifted her head to scan the gray horizon with dull eyes. "This."

Rowan took a deep breath, blinking rapidly as he and Ava started walking again, still hand in hand, although he sensed that she no longer needed the comfort for her nerves. "Yeah," he whispered. "Maybe so…"

But for the first time since his parents' death, he thought maybe not.

"There's a pond!" Lei squealed when Rowan and Ava reached them, and then asked him, "Can we go swimming?"

Rowan surveyed the murky water, deciding that while he wouldn't have dared to drink out of it, swimming in it might not be that bad, and it really was a remarkably warm day. "I guess so."

With happy screams, Lei and Heidi jumped right in.

"Are you going to join them?" Rowan asked, smiling lightly at the brunette at his side.

She shook her head. "I don't know how to swim."

"So, you won't race, you won't swim, and you'll barely talk," Rowan teased her, hoping to lighten her mood. "What will you do?"

Ava shrugged.

"I bet you'll float," Rowan said on impulse.

Ava looked up at him in confusion. She didn't understand what he meant until he scooped her up into his arms and darted into the cool water, dropping her straight into the middle of the pond as she became very vocal, screaming how awful he was, how much she hated him. She floundered for a minute as Rowan backed away from her flailing limbs and instructed her to kick her feet and arms appropriately.

"See, you're doing it," he said at length, grinning like he couldn't remember having done in awhile. "Now, there's one more thing that you need to do."

"What?" Ava asked, treading water.

"Stand up."

"Stand up?" she repeated.

Rowan nodded, raising his eyebrows. So she did, looking none too impressed when she realized that the water wasn't even two feet deep.

"Rowan Ellery," she said.

"Yes?" he asked merrily.

"I hate you."

He grinned, "Sure you do."

"I thought I was going to drown!"

"Drown?" Heidi repeated. "Did someone say that they wanted to drown?"

"N-"

Rowan was cut off as Lei dove underneath the water and knocked his feet out from under him. He fell into the water and then resurfaced, finding that he was slightly amused by the sound of three giggling girls.

"You are all horrible people," he sputtered. "I hate every one of you."

The three girls looked at each other before they turned back to him, saying in sync, "Sure you do."

A few of hours later, the sun was starting to set and the water in the pond was starting to cool, so they all got out. They already had a newborn baby being added to their group; the last thing they needed was four sick teenagers. Heidi and Lei headed straight for a rusty swing set, their clothes still dripping wet behind them. Ava lay back on the grass beside the edge of the pond, and Rowan settled cross-legged on the grass at her head, looking at her upside down.

He plucked a blade of grass from the ground, inserting it between his teeth as Ava laughed under her breath, presumably from the way that he looked upside down in the fading light of evening. Rowan impulsively leaned down over her and tickling her nose with the top of the weed in his mouth. She laughed again, batting it away, and he obligingly sat up, leaning against his arms as he planted his palms into the dampening ground while a slight smile fought to spread across his mouth.

"You like my sister a lot, don't you?" Ava asked after a minute of silence, breaking the comfortable silence that had grown between them.

Rowan rolled the stem of the weed around on his tongue as he considered his answer. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "It just seems a little futile to like someone that way considering how little time we have, doesn't it?"

"I don't know," Ava mused, lacing her hands behind her head as she stared up at the stars coming into the sky. "Everyone dies eventually, even first generations. Better to die young then young _and _alone, I would think."

"Isn't that why we're looking for our sisters?" Rowan asked. "So we don't have to be alone?"

"But that's different," she pointed out. "Sisters are the best, but to have a husband and kids? That would be better."

"Even if you knew that those children were going to be left orphans, and your husband was going to spend five years a lonely widower?"

Ava sighed deeply, "What if there's an antidote out there somewhere?"

Rowan snorted, biting back the impulse to tell her about his parents. "If there is, no one's found it yet, and they've been looking for so long."

"You don't think they'll find one?" Ava asked, rolling her hazel eyes back in her head to look at him.

He frowned at her, debating his answer. She was so small that she brought out his protective instincts, but something told her that she had the maturity to handle whatever life threw at her when she wanted to. So he was honest with her.

"No. I don't." He paused before asking, "Do you?"

"I don't know." She looked back towards the stars, saying, "I used to, but then… when I lost my last baby, I just started thinking 'do I really even want to bring a child into this world? And if not, do I even want to stay here any longer than I have to?'" She shrugged. "I guess I just don't care anymore."

"It's your life, Ava," he objected, sliding down to lie in the grass beside her. "Everyone cares to live their life."

"For as long as they can," she added.

"Yeah," Rowan agreed softly, his heterochromic gaze meeting her hazel one as he repeated, "For as long as they can."

He felt something squeeze his hand, and looked to the grass, seeing that their fingers were intertwined again. This time, though, he got the feeling that she was the one comforting him.

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	8. Chapter 8

All of a sudden, Lei and Heidi took off running past them, almost stepping on his hand that Ava wasn't holding in their haste. Rowan and Ava sat up quickly, looking to where the duo going. Ella and Cambria were jogging towards them. Peering through the growing darkness, Rowan saw that both the sixteen year olds were smiling, and he took that as a good sign, sighing as he relaxed back against the ground, relief flooding him.

The second emotion to hit him was that of guilt. While Zoe had been fighting with Ella, Cambria, and Jolie to bring her baby into this world, he had been having a good time swimming with Ava, Lei, and Heidi, and getting chatty and personal with Ava – a little too personal for his usual conversation comfort zone.

As he and Ava scrambled onto their feet, Lei and Heidi talked quickly with Ella and Cambria before the tiny Asian girl raced back to him and Ava. The grin that he had begun to suspect was a fixed part of her expression was brighter than ever when she informed him, "You're going to be happy!"

"Oh?" Rowan asked, looking at her and trying to hide the amusement that she brought on. "Why is that?"

"Because Zoe had a boy!"

Rowan grinned at Lei. "Nice."

"I told you he'd say that," Lei said, turning to Cambria as she approached with Ella and Heidi.

"How's Zoe?" Ava asked, her grasp on his hand once again as tight and as anxious as her tone had become.

"She's fine," Ella soothed, wrapping an arm around her younger sister's shoulders in the same way that Rowan had seen her do so many times since they had become a group. "The baby's doing even better. If his lungs are any indication, there's no way that any of us are getting any sleep for the next week!"

Rowan flinched, only half kidding as he groaned, "Great…"

"Does he have a name yet?" Heidi asked.

"Zoe named him Francis," Ella said.

"We'll have to call him Frankie," Lei said, wrinkling her nose a little.

"Alright…" Rowan said. "We probably need to get back to the truck; it may not be a good idea to leave Jolie and Zoe there alone."

The girls agreed, and with one final, quick glance at their entwined hands, Ava slipped her slender fingers from around his and walked ahead with her sister. Excited to see the new baby waiting for them, Lei and Heidi raced ahead of the two Bloom sisters, leaving Cambria lagging behind beside him.

She looked at him sideways, eventually asking, "So, what's going on with you, anyway?"

Rowan didn't know her very well – even less than he knew some of the others that he was travelling with – and so he treaded carefully, returning a question for a question as he asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, for two hours, you're sleeping with Ella's head in your lap, and then when we show up here, you're holding hands with Ava. And I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but Lei is completely enamored with you."

He cringed, admitting, "I was afraid that was it."

"Well, you did kind of save all of our lives," Cambria pointed out.

Rowan shrugged, deciding not to tell her that in his own mind he had accredited that to Ella.

"So," Cambria asked after a moment's pause. "Which one of them do you like?"

"What?"

"Which one of the girls do you return feelings for?"

Rowan raised his eyebrows, not letting himself seriously consider the question before he took a copout answer. "I _feel _that each one of you girls have your own merits, and I like each of you."

"Even Payton?" Cambria asked with a raised eyebrow of her own.

Rowan allowed himself a smirk as he answered, "Well, she is apparently very good at her job of choice."

That made Cambria snort as she answered, "Yeah, that's one exceptionally nice way to put it."

"I thought so too," Rowan admitted as they approached the truck.

Once there, their conversation cut off abruptly as Lei took his hand and pulled him over to see baby Frankie. Though he was smart enough not to say so in front of all of these girls, Rowan just didn't see what the gigantically big deal was about one tiny, wrinkly, red, screaming little baby boy, and he certainly didn't think that the kid was anything near unto _cute_ as the others kept exclaiming that he was. But he certainly didn't voice his thoughts. Instead he just enlisted Ella in helping him hand out a late dinner.

After they were all done eating, Lei, Zoe and Jolie fell asleep in the truck and Cambria, Ava, and Heidi strung themselves out across the truck bed and ground trying to find a comfortable place to sleep. Rowan gathered up their trash and set a small fire on it to get rid of the waste and maybe even get a little more warmth circulating to some of the girls. He crouched in front of the meager warmth and stared into the flickering flames, letting himself think of Rhine until Ella came up behind him and jogged him out of his thoughts as she sat cross legged on the grass, staring at him from across the fire.

"We need to talk about Zoe," she said, tone soft and serious as the dancing light turned her face orange and her brown eyes black.

"I know we're going to have to rest up here a few days, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, it's more than that;" Rowan's eyes snapped from the flames to Ella's expression when she said, "It's the virus."

"What about it?" he asked, glancing about them to ensure that the others were asleep, but dropping his voice lower all the same.

"Zoe told Jolie, Cambria, and me something while you and the younger girls were gone." Ella paused before continuing, "She asked Jolie to take care of Frankie for as long as Jolie was with the rest of us."

"How much time does Zoe have left?" Rowan asked flatly, knowing where this was going as he turned his gaze back to his paltry fire.

"She's not sure; she doesn't remember her exact birthday. She said that her best guess was one, maybe two weeks before she starts getting sick."

Rowan looked out towards the highway, muttering a few choice words.

"Rowan…" Ella said at length. "She asked me to make you promise to take care of Frankie."

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	9. Chapter 9

Upon this declaration his eyes snapped back to Ella's. "Why would Zoe want me to raise her baby?!"

Ella shrugged helplessly. "Maybe because you're a guy and she thinks Frankie needs a father? Maybe because you're the only guy that she trusts even a little, or because she knows that you've got a heart big enough to help and take in those that need the help?"

"I do not," he muttered, eyes flickering back towards the flames.

They were easier to look at then the emotion-filled expression of the beautiful girl across from him.

"Then why did you save all ten of us girls when your only real aim was to find your sister?" Ella asked gently.

Rowan sighed, knowing that the only answers he had to that question would just be fuel on her fire and water on his.

"Let me tell her that you'll take care of her son when she's gone," Ella begged.

"I can't do it by myself, Ella," he bit out.

"Then I'll do it by _myself_! But let me _tell her _that her last wish is going to be honored. You do know that's what this is, right?"

Rowan put his head in his hands. Ella was right, his only objective had been – should still be – simply to find Rhine. How had things gotten as complicated as this?

"Alright," he said at last. "Fine; you can tell her I'll do it."

But whether or not he actually would was something that still remained to be decided.

"Thank you," Ella murmured, rising to her feet. "Now, let's get some sleep."

Rowan shifted but stayed where he was. "I don't like being so exposed like this; I'm going to stay up and keep watch."

Ella stared at him for a second, but since they had no real plans to go anywhere tomorrow, they both knew that she couldn't have any plausible objections, so for a long moment she just stared at the side of his head, looking like she was trying to figure him out as he stared at the fire.

At length she turned to go and climb into the bed of the truck beside Ava, ordering, "Wake me up in three hours for my shift."

A ghost of a smile drifted over Rowan's expression as he tried to pinpoint the moment when she had become his right hand man.

Settling in for the next few hours, he threw his head back and stared straight up at the velvety, star-studded night sky, running through the fifteen girls who had been in the back of that gatherer's truck. The faces of the two dead girls flashed before his eyes before he forced them away in favor of Rhine's image. His young, pretty, emotional, heterochromic sister.

"Where are you, Rhine?" he whispered to the blinking stars.

When the tears began to prick at the backs of his eyes, he knew that he needed to push Rhine aside too, and his mind slid to the face that his mind had made up for Jenna Bloom. While he had never seen her up close, being around her sisters had given his brain details to her face that he saw whether or not they were true.

He hadn't seen the face of the other girl who had went with Rhine and Jenna, had just gotten the impression of a young girl underneath red hair.

He didn't even know the names of the two girls who had left off his group at the village. The girl who stayed with the restaurant had green eyes and dark hair. The girl who had gone with the first generation had honey-colored eyes with hair of a matching hue.

Payton had shown them all only sharp edges from behind green eyes and tangled red hair.

Heidi. Rowan almost smiled, thinking of the book of the same name that his parents had as owned. The Heidi with him reminded him of the girl on the cover of the book. All the same innocent sweetness of a child half her age, but then these girls had a way of surprising him out of the middle of nowhere.

Take Jolie for one. Her black hair and eyes of such a dark blue had combined with her general silence to give him the original impression that she was something of a Goth, and then Zoe had gone into labor. Jolie had come alive then, taking charge and spewing out exactly what needed to be done. After the baby had come, she had turned into this completely different, patient, mothering nurse helping both Frankie and Zoe. She had been their rock today, their rallying point, and while Rowan was very grateful for her knowhow, he wasn't entirely certain what to do with all of the sides that she had shown throughout the day.

And then there was Ava… Again, before today she had hardly spoken, and then when she had, it had flipped his opinion of her onto its ear. Her appearance and demeanor was so misleading as to what lay underneath. For some reason, he had thought of her fifteen years as being so much younger than his sixteen, but it wasn't, and his conversations with her at the park had solidified that fact. Now he realized that she wasn't quiet because of shyness, per se, but that she was more like overburdened from all that life had thrown at her. Truth was, he realized as he thought it over, Ava Bloom had been through more than he had when it came down to it, and that was a thought that he could hardly imagine. She was a girl of many surprising secrets and strengths; he understood that now. The part that actually scared him about her though? When he had leaned over her, tickling her nose with that weed, he had come _this close _to kissing her.

Girls like Lei were so much simpler to read and deal with: young, sunny, and open, relatively unscathed by this unbelievably cruel world. Living an orphanage as she had for the last ten years meant that she had been given a little extra padding against life's horrors, and Rowan was glad of that for her sake, even though he knew that inevitably life would peel her innocence away from her a little bit at a time. He found that the thought troubled him, as he was beginning to think that maybe the world needed a few more rays of sunshine like Lei in it.

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	10. Chapter 10

Rowan heard a tiny cry from inside the truck, and that drew his thoughts on to the oldest person in their troupe – Zoe. Stories like Zoe's were the reason that it was so easy to hate this world that they all lived in. After being homeless and without any family since five years old, she had just given birth to a son, and yet she only had two weeks – two far too short weeks – at most to enjoy him before she started towards death's doorstep.

As his thoughts started drifting towards Frankie and what he had been asked where the little infant was concerned, Rowan reined them in and sent them in a direction that was at least a little easier. Cambria. She was easy to talk to, to be around… and to look at. She seemed to be the sort of girl that would easily become your best friend if you let her. She had the capable maturity that came with her years, and yet she still managed to retain a bright personality, a sort of shred of the sunshine that encased Lei. Rowan couldn't help but be attracted to that personality in someone of his own age, and yet it was a little off-putting too, since it was so rare. Despite her honey-colored eyes and caramel hair cropped at her chin, she reminded him if his sister in a way – in her emotional connection to life that Rowan had come to consider so dangerous.

And then there was Ella. Rowan pushed a breath of air out of his lungs, resting his forehead in his hands as he considered Ava's frank question from earlier in the day.

_You like my sister a lot, don't you?_

Truthfully, Ella was a very beautiful girl, and, yes, he was attracted to her on a physical level. Yes, they connected mentally right now because of their shared single-minded determination to find their respective sisters, but was there anything beyond that, underneath the surface, perhaps? He didn't know, and he didn't think that he had known her long enough to be able to tell.

Suddenly he was ripped out of his reflections by the noise of a truck door clicking open. He jumped, nearly flying to his feet before he registered that it was just Lei climbing out of the vehicle. She shut the door as softly as she could before creeping towards him.

She paused a few feet away from him and her small voice floated across the fire murmuring, "Rowan?"

"Yeah?" He asked softly, relaxing once again. "Aren't you supposed to sleeping?"

She took a few more steps towards him, and he noticed the tears swimming in her black eyes as she confessed, "I keep seeing the faces of those two dead girls in the gatherers' truck. They were in my dreams and I woke myself up to get away. I don't want to go back to sleep."

Rowan sighed to himself. He knew all too well what she meant. "Do you want to sit with me for a little while?" he offered, getting an inkling that was what she had come to him for.

Lei nodded and swiped at her eyes before rounding the fire and sitting down beside him. She shivered and he – acting almost on instincts – opened the thin folds of his jacket to her. She snuggled close, leaning her head over on his shoulder. It hadn't really hit him until now just how small and defenseless she was, young in ways that truly had nothing to do with her age.

They just sat there together as an hour passed, both staring comfortably into the fire until he heard her breathing grow deeper and even as she drifted back off to sleep.

Once midnight came, he didn't want to chance waking Lei up by moving to go get Ella for her shift keeping watch, so he forced himself to stay awake and do the job himself. Twenty minutes later, though, Ella woke up on her own and jumped down from the truck bed.

She gave sleeping Lei a second glance as she approached the fire and asked, "It's my turn to keep watch, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm not going to move and wake Lei up; you can go back to sleep if you want."

"Do you think you could fall asleep where you are?"

"I think I could fall asleep at the bottom of the ocean right now if I had to."

Ella smiled as she settled down onto the ground across from him. "I hear if you stay down there long enough you start to sleep _really _well."

"Mm, haven't tried it; don't ever expect to."

"Please don't; I have a feeling that we'd all be a little lost here without you."

"Nah," Rowan shook his head. "You could handle running the show."

Ella sighed. "Funny you think so, because it feels like I'm floundering. Jenna was always the one who took charge, being the brave one since she's the oldest."

"Everyone of you girls from that truck are brave in your own way simply for the fact that you haven't let the experience hurt you to any extreme." His arm shifted around Lei as he added, "If nightmares are the worst thing that comes of this experience, then that's saying something."

Ella smiled shakily, "Thanks."

"It's true," he said, smiling lightly back at her.

"You better go to sleep before you get tired enough to say something truly sentimental, Rowan."

He chuckled, but obligingly lay down on the grass, careful to shift Lei as little as possible as he situated himself beside her, still holding her close.

He heard Ella whisper good night to him as his eyes instantly became heavy and drifted closed.

Three hours later, his eyes fluttered open when a cool hand traced its way down his arm.

"Rowan, wake up; it's your turn again."

Ella's voice dragged him out of his fitful sleep and he went to sit up before realizing the Lei had his arm trapped under her ribcage. He smiled with sleepy, something like paternal affection at the little girl and carefully disentangled himself from her. Feeling the coolness from the lack of her body heat, Rowan shrugged off his jacket and laid it across Lei, knowing that the same chill would hit her otherwise.

"Are you going to be okay here?" Ella asked, smiling gently at the way he had just handled Lei.

Rowan nodded, blinking away the last bit of sleep-induced blurriness out of his eyes. "Yeah, sure. You go on back to Ava."

"Thanks, Rowan," Ella said.

She surprised him, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek before she went back to her sister's side.

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	11. Chapter 11

Three hours later, Rowan was getting ready to rouse to do more than just keep watch since the sun was starting to turn the black sky a strangely cozy gray. He had thought that he would never again connect those two adjectives ever again.

"Hey," a voice spoke from behind him, startling him.

He flew up into a standing position and whirled around to face the voice with his fists already raised, still on too high of an alert.

"Watch it!" Cambria yelped, jumping away from him.

"Sorry," Rowan muttered softly, forcing himself to relax.

"It's my fault for startling you, I guess," Cambria said with a shrug. "I was just going to ask if you wanted me to stay up for a while so you could get some more sleep."

Rowan shook his head. "Thanks, but it's getting light enough that we'll be able to easily tell if anyone comes up. I was getting up anyway."

"Well, do you mind if I stay up too, then?"

"Not a bit," Rowan said.

Cambria folded herself down beside the now extinguished fire, and he went over to the still sleeping Lei, grabbing a pack of matches from a pocket of his jacket to rekindle it. He went back and crouched beside Cambria and the pile of ashes, lighting a match and throwing it on.

He glanced at Cambria as he added a few twigs to get the fire started again, requesting, "So, tell me about yourself."

"Why?" she asked in confusion.

"Well, I've talked to the others enough to know some things about each of them; if I don't hear it from them directly, Ella hears it and then relays it to me. But you… I don't know anything about you."

Cambria shrugged, looking off to the slowly rising sun. "I'm just a normal teenager, I guess. My parents were first generations. They were both killed last month when they went to a pro-science rally gone wrong. I stayed in our house until the day before the gatherers got me. Some guy had broken into our house the night before and I didn't feel safe anymore, and since I didn't even have a job and it was getting hard for me to get food and everything, I decided to just leave, since I didn't feel safe alone in the house anymore. I was getting ready to turn myself in to a scarlet district madam when I saw the newspaper article for bone marrow. You can figure out the rest."

Rowan nodded, inwardly struck by the obvious similarities between their back stories. He had apparently been very correct in comparing Cambria to Rhine.

There was a pause between them and Rowan found his eyes drifting closed again.

"You really can go lay down again, Rowan;" Cambria said, noticing his exhaustion. "I don't mind."

"Somebody has to go find something for breakfast," Rowan contradicted, getting to his feet.

"I've already thought of that," Cambria said, laying a hand on his arm and guiding him back to laying beside Lei. "Go back to sleep, boss."

"If I'm the boss, you shouldn't be ordering me around," he pointed out.

She glared at him until he sighed in resignation and let himself slide back into a dreamless oblivion.

He woke up two hours later to the crackle of the fire, Lei and Heidi playing a loud game of tag, and the tantalizing smell of grilling fish. Their little campsite had come alive while he had been asleep.

"Hey, sleepyhead," Cambria grinned at him from where she knelt by the fire keeping track of their fish breakfast.

"Where'd you get that?" Rowan asked in a rusty voice, rolling on his side and indicating the fish on an improvised spit.

"From the pond where you took the girls yesterday. I took everyone but Jolie, Frankie, and Zoe fishing. Don't worry; I checked to make sure that it was safe to eat. Since the water's fresh water, while we were gone and you were sacked out, Jolie and Zoe even came up with a way to filter the water enough so that it's safe for us to drink."

Across the campfire, Ella held up a paper cup, saying "cheers" before she swallowed a gulp of the purified water.

"That's great," Rowan said, standing up and brushing himself off.

"We've all still got a few minutes before this is going to be ready to eat," Cambria said. "Do you want to go ask Zoe if she feels like eating anything?"

"Sure," Rowan agreed, heading towards the passenger seat of the truck where Zoe had been holed up for close to the past twenty-four hours. "Hey, Zoe?" he asked upon looking through the rolled-down passenger-side window.

"Yeah?" she replied faintly, her eyes fluttering from where she looked to be trying to decide whether or not to stay awake or doze off.

"Are you going to want to eat any of the fish?"

"I probably need to," she said just as tiredly, absently bouncing Frankie in her arms.

"Alright. Well, it's going to be ready in a few more minutes." Rowan turned away from her and then stopped, turning back around to face her before he could change his mind. He asked uncertainly, "Do you want me to hold Frankie for a while so that you can rest?"

A smile fluttered about the edges of Zoe's mouth, her eyes already closed at half mast as she asked, "Would you?"

"Sure," Rowan shrugged. "I might as well get to know the little guy."

Zoe's smile took on an edge of sadness as she seemed to recall that she intended for Rowan to have to raise her son. She carefully handed him to Rowan through the window, instructing the younger teen on how to hold the baby.

Rowan settled the baby into a comfortable position in his arms, looking down at him and feeling slightly awed by the tininess of the little human being in his arms. When he looked back up at Zoe, she was already asleep. He went back to the fire and sat on the ground, unable to resist talking to the infant under his breath. He never noticed the somewhat surprised and awestruck stares that he was getting from all the girls.

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	12. Chapter 12

For four days they stayed at that campsite, in some ways taking a mini vacation from life. The nine of them - counting Frankie - sat and ate around a campfire, and if they weren't purifying water or walking off to get food, they were usually to be found at the park or pond up the road. It was a generally fun four days - and at times that made Rowan feel guilty.

Although he assumed that Rhine, as a house governor's wife, was relatively safe – probably even safer than she had ever been when it was just the two of them alone in New York City – he was still uneasy at being without her. He was still antsy to go find her, and he knew that Ella and Ava shared his thoughts. Everyone knew that they wanted to once again start making progress towards Miami.

On the evening of the fourth day, Rowan was at the head of the group as they strolled back into their clearing after going for another swim in the pond. He didn't think anything of it when he saw the two girls that they had left in the clearing – Zoe and her new best friend and nurse, Jolie – in the truck, talking. Then he noticed their expressions. Jolie's was tight and guardedly anxious, and Zoe just looked downright miserable. She hadn't really recovered from Frankie's birth so that Rowan could tell, and that fact worried him more then he chose to let on. Both girls had tears in their eyes, and they seemed to be arguing quietly.

He stepped forward to go investigate, but someone reached out from behind him and grabbed his elbow. He looked over his shoulder to see Cambria gently shake her head, hair still dripping wet as a weary expression fell over her face. She went instead and joined in the conversation as Rowan stood back and watched. It seemed that whatever it was, Cambria was taking Zoe's side, and within another minute, it looked like Jolie had officially lost the disagreement. She turned and walked away, looking defeated, displeased, and just… sad.

That night, once all the girls had found a place to sleep and Rowan was again sitting before their small fire on his first shift of keeping watch, Jolie walked over to him. He looked up from his seated position to where she stood. Her eyes held that same dark, angry, and brooding look as they had earlier.

"Do you need something?" Rowan asked.

"Zoe says that she feels ready to get back on the road."

His heart jumped with eagerness as the same time his brows drew together in concern, and though he knew he might not like the answer, these girls were now his responsibility as much as Rhine was, so he forced himself to ask without letting his excitement show through, "Are you sure? She doesn't look ready to me."

Jolie glared at him for a long moment before she turned on her heel and went back to her spot on the ground by the truck's passenger side, only muttering sourly, "It's her body."

Early the next morning, they all got themselves rounded up and loaded back into the truck, although Lei and Heidi seemed to be loath to have to leave their vacation spot.

"I could leave the two of you here, if you'd like," Rowan offered nonchalantly.

"In the woods by ourselves?" Heidi asked, scrambling up into the truck to sit on the bench seat beside Zoe. "No!"

"Okay, then."

Rowan helped Lei up into the bed of the truck and she plopped down between Ava and Cambria. He went and climbed into the driver's seat, making sure that Jolie too had climbed in and was sitting on the other side of Zoe. With a tight smile to Ella, who was in the passenger seat, he put the truck in drive and finally got them back on their way to Miami, thrilled to finally be getting closer to their end goal.

But it was a short-lived thrill.

They had only gone about fifteen minutes down the road when Heidi screamed, a shriek of sheer terror that almost had Rowan driving off of the road. He threw the truck into park and whipped around in the seat to see what was wrong. The first thing that caught his eye was the solitary tear slowly leaking silently out of Jolie's eye as she stared down at Frankie in her arms. Rowan barely registered the look of horror on Heidi's face as she looked at Zoe, whose head had leaned over onto her shoulder before he took in Zoe.

Her eyes were closed, she was barely breathing, and her lips were blue.

"No," he heard Ella murmur as both of them realized the truth at the same time.

The virus had come.

Ava came and flung open one of the doors to the back seats of the truck, her eyes wide.

Seeing Zoe – realizing what was going on – she asked, "What do we do?"

"Nothing," Jolie croaked, her voice sounding rusty with a pain of her own. "There's nothing that we can do except make her comfortable; it's just her time to die."

Rowan forced his hammering heart to slow down as he asked, "How can we even make her comfortable here? Do I need to drive until I find a town?"

Jolie shrugged, not saying what all of them knew. Being in a town wouldn't help anything. "Why don't we just go back to the campsite? That place is the closest thing that any of us have to a home since the gatherers carted us across the country."

Rowan stared first at Jolie, then at Zoe. Part of him was violently rebelling against the idea of backtracking for any reason whatsoever, but then he took in the true state of his group's oldest member. Why hadn't he noticed it before it had become so blatantly obvious? By the looks of her, chances were that she had already been in the beginning stages of the virus when she had given birth to Frankie. Yes, Rhine was his responsibility, but so were Frankie and Zoe, Jolie, Ella, and every other girl that he had bought from those gatherers. So – for the sake of at least two of those girls – Rowan sighed, told Ava to go back and sit where she had been, and turned the delivery truck around, starting back for the clearing that they had just left.

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	13. Chapter 13

Rowan wandered over to the tailgate of the delivery truck later that night where Cambria was packing up their meager leftovers from the meal that they had just finished.

"There's something that I don't get," he said, leaning against the side of the truck.

"And what's that?" Cambria asked, more subdued then he had seen her since she had come out of her drug-induced stupor on that first day.

It was messing with all of their heads, knowing that they had a dying girl in their midst.

"Jolie had to have known that Zoe was already sick, so why did she tell us that Zoe was okay to travel?"

Cambria's mouth formed a thin line as she answered, having yet to look at him, "That's what they were arguing about when we came back from the pond last night. Zoe knew that it was important to you, Ella, and Ava to get back on the road and make it to Miami. She thought that she could make it there, since it's only one good day's travel to get there from here, but Jolie knew that if she was put under any strain at all – even getting back on the road – that she wouldn't be able to handle it. Zoe insisted that Jolie was wrong and made her promise to tell you that she would be okay, which Jolie did… even though she was obviously right."

"That's why Jolie was so upset when she talked to me about it," Rowan mused.

Cambria nodded. "Probably."

"I wish that there was something that we could do," Ella murmured, coming up on the very end of Rowan and Cambria's conversation.

"Yeah," Rowan confessed, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Me too."

"You could try going and talking to one of the two of them," Cambria suggested to both Ella and Rowan.

"One of which two?" Rowan asked. "Zoe's been fading in and out of consciousness all day."

"Jolie and Heidi."

Ella looked up towards the cab of the truck where they all knew that Jolie had once again holed herself up inside with Zoe, before she started in that direction, saying, "I think I'll go see if I can get Jolie to come out here and eat anything. "

"What's this about Heidi?" Rowan asked Cambria, searching for the fourteen year old's blonde braids in the gathering twilight. "Is she still shook up?"

Cambria sighed. "Yeah; I tried to cheer her up when we go here, but it didn't work. I don't know what to do with her. None of us do – or even if we should do anything at all. Have you really looked in her face since we got here? I don't know how to even explain it…"

Rowan finally caught sight of her at the edge of the clearing – one of the twin dark shadows that had settled beside a strand of trees. "I'll go see if I can get through to her."

"Thanks, Rowan," Cambria said gratefully, smiling wearily at him as he started towards the group's two youngest girls.

Only then did he notice that Frankie's furious screams had begun to echo throughout the area. Crouching down beside Lei and Heidi, who were both trying to comfort the infant, Rowan asked, "What's wrong with him?"

"He's hungry, and Zoe can't help him now…" Heidi explained. When she looked up at him, Rowan saw the tears streaming down her face.

Rowan swallowed, brows drawing together in thought before a new thought slowly dawned on him.

"Let me check into something," Rowan said, rising to his feet.

Lei stood as well and trotted to catch up with him as he started back towards the others.

"I think it changed her for good," Lei admitted softly when they reached the spot where they were far enough away from Heidi and from the others to be overheard by none of them. "I've stayed with her all day trying to cheer her up, and she's acting like… like she's old, or sleepy. I don't know if she has even seen me there with her. Her eyes… they look kind of… dead."

_Could she be in shock? _Rowan wondered.

"I just don't think that she's going to be the same again. It really messed her up when she realized that Zoe had passed out and fell over on her."

"Maybe she'll shake it off;"Rowan suggested vaguely. "Everybody has to grow up sometime. This might just be what it takes for Heidi."

"That's not fair."

"Neither is the rest of life," he muttered.

Lei scowled at him and stopped where she was, for which Rowan was grateful. It left him free to ask after his idea.

"Hey, Ava," he said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder as he reached the spot where she was sitting by the fire with Cambria. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah?" Ava asked casually, looking over her shoulder at him.

"Can I ask you a question… in private?"

Her eyebrows drew together, but she stood up anyway, and followed him to a remote corner of their camp. "What's wrong?" she asked once Rowan stopped and she took that as he cue to do the same.

"You said that your last baby hasn't been gone long, right?"

She blinked, surprised at his bluntness, but shook her head slowly. "Just… only a little over two weeks."

He had been startled three days ago when she first told him that her child had died so recently. The way she had talked about it the first time that she had brought up her pregnancies, Rowan had assumed that it had been a year ago at least. But, then, that's what being so surrounded by death did to them – it hardened them to it.

"Why?"Ava asked.

"I…" Rowan stumbled over his words, glad that she probably couldn't make out the deep flush in his cheeks this far away from the fire. "Frankie needs to be fed, and I thought…"

Ava sucked air sharply into her lungs, realizing what she was being asked to do. "I could try it…"

Rowan swallowed, inwardly hoping beyond hope that it would work. After all, this was the only way that they could both keep Frankie with the group like Zoe wanted and also simply keep him alive.

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	14. Chapter 14

Seven days. For one incredibly long week, they all stayed at that campsite, listening and watching as the life within Zoe gradually slipped away.

Jolie was at Zoe's side for every moment of it, their new friendship being Zoe's only comfort. That and Frankie.

They had gotten lucky where the little guy was concerned, and Ava had been able to keep him well fed, even if he never seemed to be actually happy during that week. He seemed to sense the upset in the camp, and responded accordingly by being as fussy as everyone else was on edge, unless he was with his mother. Or with Ella, oddly enough. The middle Bloom sister was the only one who seemed to be able to actually quell the baby boy's constant complaining. Ella wasn't comfortable with letting Ava get near Zoe – thus, the truck cab – while one of the girls inside it were dying of the virus, so Ella always brought Frankie from the truck and brought him to Ava herself. Because of this, the smart little guy came to associate both sisters with his meal times, and became very fond of them both, even though Ella was his favorite.

His presence was really the only bright thing in their camp as the days marched steadily towards March third. It was at five o'clock in the morning of that day that Ella climbed out of the driver's side of the truck, where she had elected to sleep that week and crept towards where Rowan sat on his watch shift. Thanks to the eerie silence that had settled over the area – suddenly unhindered by the wracking coughs from Zoe that had become the constant cacophony over the camp – he heard her coming, and the instant that she stepped close enough that her expression was lit by the firelight, he knew. She didn't have to say a word; the look in her eyes said it all.

"Does Jolie know?" he asked softly, hoping not to wake anyone who might be asleep.

Ella shook her head. "She's so exhausted herself this week that when she finally goes to sleep, nothing sans a hurricane will wake her up."

"Good," Rowan murmured.

"What are we going to do with her?" Ella asked, not sounding quite as removed from the situation as Rowan did. "The body, I mean."

"There's a shovel underneath the bench seat of the truck and I have one match left in my jacket pocket," Rowan told her. "We can either bury her or burn the body."

Ella chewed on her lip, considering. For once when he looked at her, she seemed to be not quite capable of holding in all of her emotions, and like they had the first time he had saw her, they were manifesting themselves in her dark blue eyes.

"I know that people don't really like it," she said finally. "But can't we bury her? It seems like she deserves that much."

Rowan nodded, rising to his feet and starting towards the cab of the stolen delivery truck. Ella lagged behind, but only by a step. Rowan opened a back door of the truck, sliding the shovel out from under the bench seat and placing it carefully on the dirt ground so as to not awaken anyone. They never noticed that Ava was already halfway awake, sitting up in the bed of the truck as she nursed Frankie.

"What's going on?" Ava whispered softly, causing both Rowan and Ella to start.

A pause and a look passed between Rowan and Ella before the latter said only, "Zoe."

Ava sighed, a soft sound full of defeat that should have come from someone much older than her fifteen years. She handed Frankie to Ella, who looked momentarily lost as her sister climbed down from the back of the truck. At the same time, Cambria, who had been sleeping beside Ava, woke up and jumped down as well.

"What are you doing?"Ella asked, looking at Ava.

"Helping you bury her," Cambria answered for her. "You need the help and Zoe deserves for more than two people to be there."

"Are you sure?" Ella asked, looking in concern at the youngest Bloom.

"I'll be fine," Ava answered, laying a hand on her sister's arm.

Ella nodded; looking resigned, and shifted the sleeping Frankie in her arms so that she could carry the shovel as well.

"Where are we taking her?" Ava asked,

"Let's take her to the edge of the park;"Ella suggested. "I bet she'd like hearing any kids that might wander by."

Rowan nodded.

They moved carefully, desperate to give Jolie the small mercy of letting her sleep through this, but it was a tricky thing to manage when she was right there asleep in the passenger seat. Rowan took Zoe's shoulders, and Cambria and Ava both took over a leg as they staggered their way towards the edge of the clearing.

"We'll have to be careful," Ella whispered to them. "Lei and Heidi have been sleeping at the edge here to get away from the noise of the sickness."

They moved as quickly as they could while still giving Zoe's body the dignity and respect that they all felt she deserves, wanting to be back by the time that anyone might wake up and find all of them absent.

An hour later, at six am, they crept back into the clearing, their horrible task done. As he broke through the strand of trees, Rowan was disturbed to see Lei sitting alone by the campfire, awake, but with a dull glaze over her eyes. Knowing that none of them would be able to get another moment's sleep after what they had just done, Ella, Ava, and Cambria sat down at various places around the fire.

Rowan settled down beside Lei, but she didn't acknowledge the arrival of any of them until she asked somberly, "She died, didn't she?"

"Yeah," Rowan murmured.

Lei's shoulders sagged in defeat, and Rowan found himself scooting a little closer to her as if to offer her some version of comfort.

She didn't acknowledge that either, but just said in a low voice, "I don't know why I was so freaked out by one little nightmare before; this whole world is a nightmare."

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	15. Chapter 15

Although they were now free to get back on their way towards Miami, no one mentioned it that day. They seemed to have come to the unspoken agreement that today they would allow themselves to simply grieve. They walked around and functioned as if they were in a dream for the next twenty-four hours. Even Rowan allowed himself to sink into numbness as his thoughts began to gravitate painfully towards another blonde in his life that he had also – in a sense – lost. When the thoughts and memories of Rhine became too much that day, he simply shoved them away and went fishing to get some food for when they were back on the road, since his monetary supply was rapidly dwindling.

The next morning, the remaining eight seemed to come to another unspoken decision as they roused themselves, once more got packed up, and started on their way towards Miami yet again.

Rowan found himself at the driver's seat, with Ella at his side, and Cambria, Lei, and Ava in the back seat with Frankie. Jolie and Heidi chose to sit in the bed of the truck so that they would have the privacy of being relatively alone with their separate, silent miseries.

When they made it into Orlando at 10:30 later in the morning, Jolie pounded on the back window of the truck until Rowan pulled over.

"This is a pretty big city," she said when he got out and asked her what she needed. "Can we stay here for the rest of the day? Maybe start back up tomorrow? I'm tired of being alone back here with my thoughts."

"I bet you could swap places with one of the girls in the cab," Rowan suggested. "I'm sure they'd let you hold Frankie."

"But that's not a real distraction," Jolie argued, her eyes losing their strange glaze for the first time in over a week. "I need to get away from this god-forsaken truck."

Rowan took notice of Heidi when she nodded eagerly along, looking much better then she had in a week as well. Not entirely willing to chance stealing that light from their eyes again, but not entirely willing to stay over, either, Rowan sighed as he decided to take the latter option. Assuming that Rhine had been safe these past two weeks without him, it was a safe bet that she would be able to stay that way for one more day.

"Alright," he agreed reluctantly. "I'll make sure that it's okay with the others, and if it is, I'll drive only until we find a hotel to stay the night in, okay?"

Jolie agreed easily and half an hour later, Rowan was leading the way to a less than stellar hotel room that held two beds, a tiny table, a couch, and nothing else.

Heidi came up to him as they all flopped onto beds or the couch, claiming their sleeping arrangements and asked sweetly, apparently – almost suspiciously – back to her old self, "Hey, Rowan, can I go exploring? I want to go people watching down in the dining area."

Rowan worried his lip for a second, mulling over her request. As a general rule, he didn't like it when any one of the girls went off on their own, so he made a compromise. "I'll come with you, and I'll check out the prices of the food here while you do your 'people watching,' okay?"

Heidi bit her lip for a second as if she wanted to argue, but then agreed with a happy, "Alright."

Suddenly Rowan got the feeling that he was being played somehow as he told Ella where they were going and then followed the blonde girl into the dining room.

And ten minutes later, he figured out why he had that feeling – Heidi had apparently had ulterior motives in coming in here. While he had been turned around with his back to her, surveying the outrageously priced menu, Heidi had spotted a well-off, but haggard looking couple of new parents with a fussy toddler and taken it upon herself to cheer him up before asking the little girl's parents if they would like the services of a nanny. They had taken her up on the offer, and now Rowan was standing there with Heidi once again at his side, trying to decide if he should argue against her going with these people.

"I'm not asking your permission this time, Rowan;" she said flatly, looking fiercely determined. "I'm just telling you how it's going to be instead of just leaving you here to find that I've left and panic over it. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "Look, it's been interesting traveling with you guys – kind of nice sometimes, even – and I'm really grateful to you for rescuing all of us from the gatherers, but it's time for me to get out from under you guys and move on, start my life over, sort of. Okay?"

Rowan sighed. "Okay."

Heidi nodded, gave him a flickering smile, and turned to join the young couple and their child as they left the hotel. With another weary sigh, Rowan turned to make his way back up to the hotel room and explain to the others what had just transpired.

When she opened the door to their room, the question that met him from Jolie was, "Heidi found a job, didn't she?"

"How'd you know that she was going to do that?" Rowan asked, his brow furrowing as he shut the door behind his entrance.

"That's what we talked about on the way here this morning – starting over. Orlando's a big enough place to do that in."

"She could have told me that's what she was after," Rowan muttered.

Jolie shrugged listlessly. "That's her choice, I guess. What did you get for lunch?"

"Nothing; the stuff here is way above my pay grade."

"You don't even have a job, let alone a pay grade," Ava drawled from where she was sprawled across one of the beds.

"My point exactly."

"I'll go find a cheap restaurant and bring something back then," Jolie volunteered, holding a hand out to Rowan for some cash. "I've been wanting to check out something for Frankie anyway, so I might be a little while."

He folded a few bills into her hand, reminding, "Don't go by yourself."

"Come on then, Lei," Jolie waved the youngest girl of their group towards the door with her, and the two of them disappeared down the hallway.

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	16. Chapter 16

When they came back two hours later, Rowan could hear Lei and Jolie arguing heatedly even as they were coming back down the hallway. The four teens who had remained in the hotel room had given up on the idea of waiting for Lei and Jolie to bring food back, and after two hours of waiting had just settled for the cold roasted fish that Rowan had caught and cooked the day before.

"You don't understand what it's like there!" Lei yelled, flinging the door of the hotel room open. "Your grandma took you in when your parents died; I've been in one of those places, and I say that you can't do that to Frankie! Zoe trusted you to take care of him!"

"What's he going to do in three years once I'm gone, Lei? Die or be dropped off at an orphanage – if he's lucky!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Rowan broke in between those two girls, unsure what to do with them, particularly the roaring fury that seemed to nearly have a life of its own within Lei's black orbs. "What is going on here?"

"After we found some food, I took Lei to check out an orphanage that I saw on our way here, I got offered a job there, and Lei flipped out when I told the woman who runs the place that I would probably be bringing Frankie to her."

"Why would you do that?" Ella asked.

"Zoe asked me to see to him."

"Only for as long as you were with the rest of us," Rowan added before inquiring, "So what's this about a job?"

"The woman said that since I had already been entrusted with the care of a child, she trusted me to help her look after the orphans under her care if I was interested in the job."

"Are you?"

Jolie shrugged. "Yeah, I guess; I mean it's better than living out of a truck and random hotel rooms."

"So you're going to take the job?" Ella asked.

"Yeah."

"So that negates your guardianship of Frankie and gives it to Rowan," Ava deduced.

Jolie rolled her eyes. "I know that's what we told Zoe we had agreed to, but everyone else besides her knew that he didn't mean it; he practically said as much." She turned back to Rowan. "Right? At least this way the baby will be able to stay with me."

"Until he gets old enough to auction off!" Lei snapped.

Rowan bit his lip hesitantly, knowing that he needed to step up and agree to follow up on his word to Zoe, but the idea of raising this one little baby scared him more than any number of gray coat gatherers combined.

Ella spoke up before he did, though, saying, "If you heard that whole conversation somehow, then you had to have heard me say that I would take Frankie once you left, and I meant it. Ava and I aren't going our separate ways for a long, long time, so she can feed him and I can take care of him all the other ways. Jolie, if you really wanted him, you wouldn't be even considering giving him to an orphanage right now. Go and take that job if you want to, but leave Frankie here with the rest of us. I promise, I'll treat him like he was my own son, and we all know that's more then he would ever get in any orphanage, even with you there beside him."

Jolie considered this silently for a long, tense minute before she nodded decidedly. "Fine. As his guardian, I name Rowan and Ella Frankie's adoptive parents."

"Thank you," Ella breathed, sweeping the little baby in question off of the bed and into her arms.

Jolie nodded, a smile eventually making its way across her face. "I guess I'll be off then. Thanks for everything, guys."

Rowan nodded, joining the remaining four girls as their chorus of goodbyes floated after Jolie as walked out of the room and back down the hallway.

"Now what?" Ella asked, closing the door again as Jolie disappeared from sight.

"I think that Jolie was right about needing to stop and rest up," Ava suggested. "Especially if we're actually going to make it to Miami tomorrow."

"I agree," Cambria said.

The very thought of Miami's finally being so close made Rowan want to get back on the road right that minute, but he had already paid for the hotel room until the next morning, and the girls' thought had good merit. They might as well stick around and get some rest in a real bed – even if he was going to be the one sleeping on the couch for the night.

So they slept. Cambria, Ella, and Lei slept clear through until they left the next morning, but Rowan woke up every time that Ava got up to feed Frankie.

The first time she roused, he woke from the excessive creaking of the mattress when she sat up, the baby already in her arms.

"Sorry," she whispered across the small amount of floor space that separated them.

"That's alright," he whispered back, sitting up and blinking the sleep out of his eyes, surprised for some reason to see that it was actually only four in the evening. "You can come sit over here if you don't want to chance waking Ella up," he offered, gesturing to Ava's older sister whom she was sharing the bed with. He saw Ava pause, and added, "I won't bite, I promise."

Blushing, she nodded and climbed from the bed. As he scooted over to one far side of the couch, she sat down at the other end. Even so, it was still a small couch.

"So," she whispered, "You and Ella are parents now, huh?"

Rowan took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He reached out to fondly tickle one of Frankie's bare feet as he ate, breathing, "Yeah."

She caught the nerves lacing his tone, and covered his hand with one of hers, encircling Frankie's foot in the process. "Don't be so afraid of him, Rowan. Something tells me that you're going to be a wonderful father."

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	17. Chapter 17

"Do you want kids?" Rowan asked after a moment to fill the silence that had grown between him and Ava.

Ava smiled sadly. "I would've kept the babies that I've had if there was a way to," she admitted. "But it's Ella who really wants a houseful of them… but she and Jenna have never even been pregnant."

Rowan raised his eyebrows, surprised by this when he considered the sisters' line of work.

"We don't think they can have any kids…" Ava supplied when she saw his expression.

"Just one more unfairness of this life, huh?" Rowan mused.

"Maybe," Ava allowed. "But maybe not. I mean, it's not like we have a whole lot of time left."

Rowan sighed. "Yeah.

Time. It always, unfailingly, came back to time – to the fact that they never had near enough of it.

"At least she gets to claim Frankie now," Rowan said.

"What about your claim to him? Zoe asked for you to take care of him, not Ella, so when we part ways, Daddy gets custody of him post his parents getting a divorce of sorts."

Rowan hated himself for the heat that came into his cheeks as he answered quickly, "We're hardly married, Ava."

The brunette beside him snorted. "I give that until the end of the month to get settled."

"I'm sure it will be," Rowan muttered, meaning the opposite of what Ella's little sister did.

On a normal day, Ava had proven to be good at making the correct prediction, but in this case Rowan was certain that she was way off track.

In any case, they held four more conversations over the next twelve hours, as Rowan couldn't help waking up whenever Ava was moving around within the hotel room. He didn't mind though; as a matter of fact, he found that he thoroughly enjoyed conversation with her. When Ava fed Frankie the fifth time within the hotel room, it was right before they hit the road again at seven o'clock, so everyone was awake at the time. Or at least the "everyone" who was left.

Rowan. Ella. Ava. Cambria. Lei. Frankie. Considering their original numbers, it didn't seem to Rowan that there were many people left in their group, but then again it was better for his ever dwindling pocket-book if there weren't that many of them.

At seven a.m., Rowan was in the driver's seat, Lei, Cambria, and Ella were in the back seat – the latter of whom was holding Frankie – and Ava was in the passenger seat beside him. Their thoughts of reaching Miami climbed to a new height of inducing excitement, and they made it there just less than four hours later.

But then came the unforeseen problem of finding a place to stay. This time, they knew that they were actually looking for an apartment to rent, since it was unlikely that Rhine and Jenna were just going to fall right into their laps even if they were – more than likely – in the same city now. However, considering that they wanted to stay reasonably close to the wealthy district yet were dealing with such a limited budget, they were extremely limited as to what they could find. As a matter of fact, there was only one place that Rowan could find that fit both of their needs.

He spoke to the landlord and his wife – a couple of religious-seeming first generations – and secured an apartment with them, then went back out to get the girls, Frankie, and their very meager possessions.

Relieved to hear that they finally had a real place to stay, the girls all tumbled from the truck after Rowan parked the vehicle and eagerly headed inside. They were halfway across the lobby floor when the previously unnoticed landlord reappeared with his wife at the front desk after she had fetched him from the backroom and called out worriedly, "Mr. Ellery?"

"Yes, sir?" Rowan asked as all five of the teens turned towards the man's voice.

"Are these the friends that you mentioned having live in the apartment with you?"

"Yes, sir," Rowan repeated.

The landlord – Mr. Jenson – asked slowly, "Are they any relations?"

Rowan gestured to Ella and Ava, saying, "They're sisters."

"They're _your_ sisters?"Mr. Jenson asked.

"No, sir," Rowan replied, feeling a niggling of concern start to inch into his mind.

"Mr. Ellery," the landlord sounded like he was trying to be patient with him as he clarified, "Are all of these girls related to _you_?"

"No, sir, none of them are."

"Then we have a problem, Mr. Ellery."

"Why?" Rowan asked, approaching the front desk as the girls stayed where they were in a nervous knot.

"I am aware that my wife and I am a little old-fashioned in this respect, but in our building we hold to a policy of only allowing related people to cohabitate in our apartments. Since it's my own fault that I didn't understand that you meant to live with these ladies in the same apartment, I can refund you your money right now and we can pretend that this never came happened."

"Mr. Jenson," Rowan broke in as the man started to open his cash register. "This is the only place that we find to suit our needs; there's nowhere else that we can go."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ellery," Mr. Jenson said, and to his credit, he sounded like he meant it. "But I won't bend my beliefs on what I consider to be right by God."

Rowan's eyelids fluttered as he thought up a few choice words for Mr. Jenson's God, but he said only, "Can you give me a few minutes to talk this over with the girls?"

"Of course," Mr. Jenson nodded.

"We heard everything," Ella said somberly, rocking Frankie in her arms. "We have nowhere else to go, Rowan."

"And I told him those exact words," Rowan hissed.

"Do you think it would help if we told him that our sisters are sister wives?" Ava asked him.

"Really?" Cambria asked her. "That's the best that you can come up with? Sister wives?"

That's when the thought came to Rowan, and the words slipped out before he could catch them. "Maybe that would be enough."

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	18. Chapter 18

"What do you mean?" Ella asked, looking at him in confusion. "That just means that Jenna and Rhine are related now, not any of us."

"But we could be," Rowan muttered, unable to believe that he was the one saying these things. "Hold on a second." He went back over to the front desk, where Lei was in the middle of explaining their entire situation to Mr. Jenson, probably in hopes of stirring up enough sympathy that he would let them keep the apartment anyway. "Excuse me, but could we maybe have a few hours to try and figure this out – maybe get something to eat and then come back?"

"Feel free," Mr. Jenson said.

"Great," Rowan said. He tapped the counter, thinking to ask another relevant question, "How do you feel about having a man and his four wives living in your building?"

"So long as their all married to him, we don't have any issues with it."

"Great," Rowan repeated, ignoring Lei's baffled expression as she followed him dumbly back to the other girls.

"What did you just ask him?" Cambria asked him in thinly veiled shock as he came back into their circle.

"Let's go eat in the truck," Rowan suggested.

The weather had finally started to act like it was early March, bringing in a cold wind that drove them to eat in the cab of the truck instead of around the tailgate like they had so many times before. After getting settled in the truck and passing out more cold fish, Rowan continued with his solution.

"Listen, all four of you are free to leave right now if you want," he looked across at Ella, adding, "You could even take Frankie if you want to. If you do want to stay and help me look for Rhine and Jenna, I think that there is a pretty obvious solution to this problem."

"Which is?" Ella asked.

Rowan took a deep breath, raking a hand through his mess of ever-lengthening blonde curls as he said, "What about getting married?"

Cambria was the first to speak, and it was accompanied by a snort and an amused smirk as she repeated, "All four of us… married to you?"

"In name only," Rowan assured. "And just so that we can get into that apartment. We can get annulments once we find the girls or somewhere else to stay, whichever comes first. Like I said, if you want to, you can leave right without a hint of guilt and never look back; otherwise, I'm open to any other suggestions any of you might have."

Silence reigned for a long moment as they all thought – all came up with no other ideas. The quiet was broken only when Frankie gurgled, but the noise seemed to give the girls their voices back.

"I'm in," Lei said cheerfully, and Rowan had to fight not to wince at the excitement seeping into her eyes.

"Alright," Ella decided.

Ava sighed, agreeing, "For our sisters."

Five pairs of eyes – even Frankie's somehow – swung to Cambria, awaiting her decision.

"Fine…!" she groaned.

"I think I saw the courthouse on the way here," Lei spoke up.

"We're going to need some sort of proof for Mr. Jenson, you know," Ava said. "Something to prove that we're all… a family."

"I'm pretty sure I saw a pawn shop between here and the courthouse," Rowan said, starting the truck and putting it in drive. "We'll have to see if there's some rings there that we can afford."

From there on out, Rowan forced his mind to shut down on what he was doing. They found mismatched rings, went to the courthouse, exchanged vows – he did manage to request a version where the woman spoke for herself, yet no kissing was involved – and they were back at the Jenson's apartment building and in their newly acquired apartment by 2:30.

It wasn't a big apartment, Rowan mused, absently twisting his new wedding ring around on his finger. There were four bedrooms barely big enough to hold a bed and small dresser, and one closet-sized bathroom all of which surrounded the main room into which you entered. That main room was equally sparse – a small stove, sink, and refrigerator made up the room's corner that was to function as a kitchen, and the rest of the room was devoted to a small table with two dining chairs, a love seat, a rocking chair in desperate need of WD-40, and a couple other chairs. The whole thing sat atop hard, dark green carpet that even Rowan could realize was ugly had he cared to. The whole place and everything in it was old, but at least it was clean.

"You know," he heard Cambria mutter. "Usually when a girl is forced into marrying against her will, she gets a lot better accommodations than this."

"You can still leave, Cam," Rowan pointed out, turning to face her.

She just huffed and darted into the third bedroom, shutting the door behind her with a resolute amount of force.

"She'll come around," Lei said, and Rowan turned to look at her where she leaned against the doorjamb of the fourth bedroom.

"You think so?"

Lei nodded. "She told me before that she had a boyfriend back in Manhattan; I bet that she's just missing him right now."

Rowan's eyebrows furrowed as he asked, "If she had a boyfriend back home, then why didn't she say something that first day when I asked?"

"Just because she had a boyfriend doesn't mean that he was worth going back to," Lei said with a shrug.

Rowan frowned, but Lei slipped back into her room and closed the door before he could ask any further questions. Sighing, he flung onto the couch the bundle made up of another outfit that he had acquired throughout the course of the trip. He snagged the bag of food from where it had been dropped by one of the girls and transferred it onto the tiny amount of counter space that was provided in the kitchen, emptying it out into one of the kitchen area's four cabinets or the refrigerator, whichever was necessary. As he worked, he listened for indications of which girl had taken over which room, and what they were doing.

He heard Ella babbling away in the first room, which meant that she and Frankie were in there. Since Cambria was in the third room and Lei in the fourth, Ava had to be in the second one. In his mind, that was a good "order" keep them in, so to speak.

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	19. Chapter 19

After waiting a few more minutes for the girls to emerge back into the open, when none of them did so, he called out, "Hey, guys, can you come out here for a second?"

Lei came out first, then Ava, Ella carrying Frankie, and finally Cambria, the last of whom just stood in her open doorway, arms crossed protectively over her chest.

It was on the tip of Rowan's tongue to simply beg the quartet before him to not let things get weird between them, but he had a bigger goal in mind that had to be addressed as their top priority.

"We all understand that the objective here is to find Rhine and Jenna, right?" he asked first off, trying not to look too long at Lei as he spoke.

He felt absolutely disgusting for having just married a thirteen year old girl, but it couldn't be helped at the moment.

"Of course," Ava said, speaking for them all.

"Then how about going out and seeing if we can't get some information on them?"

"Now?" Cambria asked.

Rowan nodded, looking to Lei when she asked," How? Where are we even supposed to start?"

He shrugged at that. "I guess that we just have to start somewhere and fan out from there, asking about them as we go."

"So where do we start?" Ella asked.

"We don't know the city, so I figure it would be easiest to just start from here and work outwards. I want you girls to go in pairs, though."

"Of course," Cambria drawled.

"I'll take Ava and Frankie with me," Ella said, and Rowan knew that she was trying to curb trouble from the other sixteen year old girl taking up residence in the apartment, ever being his right hand man.

"I guess that makes it you and me," Lei said, smiling cheerfully at Cambria.

She was younger then all of them, yet Lei seemed to know that her strength in this group lie in being able to make the rest of them lighten up. With any luck, Lei's laughter would be just the medicine that Cambria needed.

Rowan smiled gratefully at his youngest bride, and in less than ten minutes, the six of them went three separate ways after agreeing to an eleven pm curfew for the evening.

While Rowan was filled with a renewed fervor to find his sister as he made his way around the city, what he really craved was some time to think through this tumultuous day. All the same, a very big part of him didn't want to think about the fact that he now had four wives – whether in name only or not – and a son to boot. It was because of this combination of discomfort with his "marital situation" and drive to find his sister that he didn't drag himself back into the Jenson's apartment building until right at eleven pm, exhausted and disappointed at having learned nothing about Rhine's or Jenna's whereabouts.

He opened the door to his own apartment building only to find it lit only by the streetlight's glow coming in through the window. Lei was curled up on the love seat asleep, apparently having tried to wait up for him, but the others were obviously in their own bedrooms already.

Smiling gently at this deeply-sleeping young girl, who so obviously wanted to believe that the marriage that she had just entered into was destined to become a real one, Rowan scooped her up into his arms and carried her into her bedroom, laying her across her bed. Although he was so tired that the idea was tempting, he couldn't bring himself to lie down beside her. She was too presumptuous… and, at least in his mind, too young. Instead, he stumbled back into the main room and where he noticed a plate of food already waiting for him on the table. Maybe this thing of having wives wouldn't turn out to be all that bad…

Twenty minutes later, Rowan had wolfed down the food and, after an hour, had already tried sleeping in three different spots in the main room, all without success. He assumed that he was just thinking too much, now that he was finally in Miami, and he wondered if any of the girls – he couldn't bring himself to think of them as his wives – were having the same problem.

Just then Ella opened the door to her bedroom and, unaware that he was watching her, slipped into Ava's bedroom and back out again, delivering Frankie to his "auntie" so that he could be fed. She noticed him when she came back out of Ava's room, jumping when she caught sight of him, wide awake and listlessly spread eagle across the hard floor.

"Rowan, what are you doing?" she hissed.

He muttered, "Trying to sleep."

"Is it working?" she asked with a small laugh.

"Not at all."

"Then come on," she said with a smile, waving him towards her open bedroom door. Rowan just looked at her, surprised at what she was offering to allow him to do, so she added, "I trust you to be a gentleman."

He rolled over, looking away from her and blaming the words that were about to come out of his mouth on the late hour of the… morning, by now. "I wouldn't trust me with you, if I were you."

"Oh?" she asked a new thread of seriousness – of what he really thought might be flirtation – winding its way into her voice as he heard her creep closer to him from across the room. "Maybe I don't really care if you're a gentleman or not."

Rowan rolled slowly back over so that he was facing her again, but he didn't move to leave the floor. "What?"

"Come on, Rowan," she said, rolling her eyes playfully. "Not even you are that dense; you know what I mean. I like you… and if I don't miss my mark, you like me too."

Rowan swallowed, forcing himself to be reasonable as he sat up slowly. He badly wanted to take her up on her obvious offer – it would be so easy – but in doing so, they would open up a whole new can of worms where their fake marriage was concerned, and he didn't know if he was willing to do that.

Now that she was offering it to him though, he wasn't sure that he was willing _not _to do it, either.

"Look, Ella…" he started falteringly.

"Just come on!" she urged with a laugh, and it struck him that was the first time that he had ever heard her laugh.

The sound enraptured him, and when she offered him her hand to help him off of the floor, he took it, following her into her bedroom.

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	20. Chapter 20

Rowan woke up at five-thirty the next morning. His eyes fluttered open as Ella slid out of the bed and shuffled to the minute closet that held her one change of clothing. He watched her through the darkness, shaking off his bleariness as she took her t-shirt off of its hanger and pulled it onto her body before dressing the rest of the way.

She smiled down at him when she turned around after dressing and registered his wakefulness. "Hey, you," she whispered, leaning down to give him a quick kiss.

Rowan mumbled nothing in particular as he sat up, glancing at Frankie's empty pallet on the floor. "Did Ava ever bring the baby back in?" he asked, his voice rusty with sleep.

"No," Ella said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

"How come?"

She shrugged, smirking as she answered, "I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that it has to do with the thinness of the walls in this apartment."

Rowan fell back against the headboard, groaning loudly as he threw an arm across his eyes and asked hesitantly, "Do you think she heard us?"

"Probably," Ella said, shrugging again. "I'm willing to bet that everyone in this apartment and the next did."

"Doesn't that worry you?"he asked.

"No. Ava knows that we like one another; and it's not anybody's business but ours anyway."

"Just because it's not anyone else's business doesn't mean that they won't pry into it," Rowan pointed out, climbing out of bed and pulling on his boxers and jeans.

"So what?" Ella asked. "Our main objective here hasn't changed – we're still here to find our sisters." She moved to stand in front of him, laying a hand on each of his shoulders and looking solemnly into his eyes as she assured, "We will be fine, okay?"

"Okay," Rowan mumbled.

Ella grinned. "Good."

His wife placed one more quick kiss on his lips before slipping out of her bedroom. Rowan hurried to clamber into the t-shirt that had been abandoned on her bedroom floor before he ducked into the main room as well. He was a little startled to see that Cambria and Ava were already awake and appeared to be making breakfast.

The latter girl glared sharply at him before turning back to the task at hand. Despite Ella's predictions, the youngest Bloom sister looked to be very upset with him.

"Where's my son?" Ella asked cheerfully, snitching a piece of toast from off of the pile that Cambria was making.

"Asleep on my bed," Ava answered. "I kept him in with me so that you wouldn't have to get up again during the night to bring him back into me."

Cambria snorted in amusement, muttering, "Sure that's why."

"Shut up, Cambria," Ava snapped.

"I see you're in a better mood this morning," Rowan stated, slipping strategically between her and Ava to grab a piece of toast for himself.

"Sure am," Cambria said teasingly, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

Rowan jumped, looking at her in surprise. Mirth-filled honey-colored orbs glittered back at him, and she made no attempt to disguise her smile. Ella had obviously been right about having been overheard last night, and Cambria apparently thought it was hilarious – unlike her fifteen year old sister wife.

Rowan couldn't get out of that apartment fast enough that morning and he was back on the streets again looking for clues to Rhine and Jenna's whereabouts within the hour. But yet again he was plagued by the distracting thoughts of what to do with his wives, although this time his considerations were mainly centered around Ava. How was he supposed to appease her when he had obviously done so thorough a job of angering her? He hadn't even seen her angry before, so he was well aware of the fact that he was woefully unprepared to do anything to undo the damage, especially since – in all honesty – he wasn't sure that he was sorry for what he had done. Sure, it made things more complicated on a lot of different levels, but Ella was legally his wife, and he really was beginning to believe that he loved her.

But then… he almost believed that he was falling in love with Ava as well, even with as different as the two sisters had turned out to be. And that, he decided, was going to be his biggest problem – for now, and for as long as he was married to all of these girls. How was he supposed to take care of each of them properly – give them each what they uniquely needed to stay at least reasonably happy – on every side of each one of the four of them? It was a lot for a sixteen year old boy to take on, he realized, fighting back a sudden, uncharacteristic wave of panic.

Walking along the dark, chilly sidewalk as the sun came up, Rowan shoved his hands in his pockets and forced himself to calm down and refocus on finding Rhine. There would be plenty of time to worry about his wives once he got back to the apartment.

The day couldn't decide whether it wanted to pass slowly or quickly. When Rowan thought simply about being out on the street asking questions about his sister and Jenna, it seemed like forever since he had left the apartment that morning, but when he thought about it as how much time he had been able to spend away from all of his wives the time seemed much shorter. It was a horrible thing to think, he knew, but he couldn't help it – he just felt so inadequate in his dealings as a husband of any sort. Maybe that feeling would fade as he got used to the situation? He could only hope so.

Because despite the fact that his only objective here should be to find Rhine, he was finding himself increasingly drawn to these girls, even with his underlying… terror… of them.

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	21. Chapter 21

It was already ten at night, and Rowan was torn. It would be a wise idea to head back to the apartment – it was already too late for him to be out alone in the dark – but he dreaded the idea of going back into that place, facing all of the drama that he had had a feeling was soon going to start bubbling up to the surface.

As it was, regardless of all of that, he knew that he still needed to talk to Ava – get things with her settled back down. The truth was that Rowan was beginning to suspect that he needed Ava's companionship as much as if not more than he needed anything else that this trip had brought him.

While Ella fed his fervor to find Rhine and Jenna, Ava kept him grounded in the mean time. Cambria took care of the small things behind the scenes that were made necessary to live, and Lei made sure that he had one reason or another to smile at least once a day.

This was the way that it had been since the day that Zoe had given birth to Frankie, and that's the way that it continued to be.

After a month and a half of living in Miami, Rowan was finding it hard to keep his concentration on finding Rhine and Jenna when his own wives were so much closer – so much more a part of his reality. He had grown out of his original nerves for the most part and had learned how to handle them individually and juggle them as a group.

It hadn't taken long for his marriage to each girl to become a real one, and Rowan hardly ever thought to loathe the fact anymore. He had come to appreciate and enjoy the way that they had learned to function as one family even considering the four separate marriages within that family. Within a week of arriving in Miami, Cambria and Lei had seen the necessity in gaining a steady income, and both girls had abandoned the search for Rhine and Jenna in favor of taking up jobs as servers with a company that catered to the great number of wealthy people on the outskirts of the city. Rowan, Ella, and Ava continued their search though, since none of them were entirely willing to give up on finding their respective sisters, no matter how easy the option sometimes seemed – especially as time wore on.

So life settled into a routine, and Rowan found himself becoming some version of content with this new life that was so unlike any he could've ever imagined for himself.

And then all four girls – one by one – gave him news that rocked his world.

Ava was the first to do it – the first to break him into the idea – on the night of April nineteenth.

"Good night," Ella told him cheerfully on that night, giving Rowan a peck on the lips as she handed him their adopted son before going into her bedroom.

"Good night," Rowan called after her before giving Cambria a quick kiss on the forehead before she went into her own room. "And good night to you, too, sweetheart."

Lei giggled as she and Rowan both caught Cambria repress a smile as she rolled her eyes at the term of endearment that she claimed to despise. Rowan smiled down at his youngest wife as if Cambria's smile was a juicy secret to be shared just between the two of him. This thirteen year old girl with the almond-shaped eyes was the only one that Rowan still felt even remotely guilty for having made his wife in any and all fashions of the word, but her innocent love for him was given so without reserve that he couldn't help but return the feelings, despite his last remaining misgivings.

"Good night, love," he murmured with a smile, leaning down to kiss her before watching her disappear into her own room.

Once all four bedroom doors were closed, Rowan turned to look at Frankie in his arms, grinning at the baby as he cracked open Ava's bedroom door, knocking as he did so.

"Come on in," Ava said softly. "I've told you that you don't have to knock."

Rowan shrugged as he entered. Although he had by far lost most of his reserve around these four your women, he didn't think that he would ever lose his appreciation for personal space, and he preferred to afford his wives the same thing.

A few minutes later, Rowan was sprawled across his side of Ava's bed with her beside him, both of them watching Frankie as he nursed.

"What do you think?" Ava asked suddenly, her voice managing not to disturb the sleepy, contented silence that wrapped comfortably around them as she ran a hand over Frankie's fine blonde hair – Zoe's hair.

"Of what?" Rowan asked, lacing his hands behind his head.

"I don't know?" Ava shrugged. "… being a father?"

Rowan smiled, running a finger across the baby's ankle as he answered, "Frankie's great. I like having a kid a lot more than I thought I would." His smile slid as he noticed his wife bite her lip while keeping her eyes fastened on Frankie. "Ava?" he asked.

"How do you feel about having another one?" she asked softly.

Rowan blinked once, twice, three times, letting what she had just implied sink in. He opened his mouth once, finding his voice on the second try as his heartbeat hit the roof.

"You're pregnant?"

Ava nodded, looking at him nervously.

"As in having a baby? Carrying _my child _right now?"

She nodded again and promptly burst into tears.

"What's wrong, honey?" Rowan asked, concern rapidly mounting.

"You're upset and I'm scared to death!" Ava choked.

"I am not upset, Ava," Rowan soothed quickly, taking Frankie from her when the baby began to fuss. "I'm happy – thrilled even! Frankie deserves to have a brother or sister."

"You're sure?" Ava asked, eyeing him carefully.

Rowan nodded, and despite the panic that he felt, he knew that he really was thrilled. She still wouldn't stop crying, though, not completely, so he asked, "Are you okay?"

"I'm scared… what if something goes wrong with this baby like it did my others?"

"Nothing will go wrong," Rowan promised, pulling her close.

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	22. Chapter 22

And then came May eleventh. It was a Frankie-less version of the normal post-going-to-bed scene in the apartment, and this time it was Lei's night to spend with him. She was giddy, Rowan had noticed, bouncier than usual. She had something to tell him, he knew, but as the evening wore on without her saying anything out of the ordinary, Rowan assumed that she would simply wait until they were alone in her room. That time had now come.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, winding his arms around her waist and pulling her close, so that she was standing between his legs, looking eye to eye with him. "What's been up with you today?" he asked with a small grin, loving the cheerfulness that forever radiated from her.

Lei blurted it out, as sunny as ever and still somehow far too innocent to realize what they had just gotten her into. "We're going to have a baby!"

Rowan swallowed harshly, trying not to show how much this thought tore at him. He couldn't decide whether or not he should be happy or horrified, and somehow he managed to feel both emotions at once. What he did know was that she had seen how excited he had been when he and Ava had announced the youngest Bloom sister's pregnancy the week before, and Lei would expect him to feel the same thing for the baby that she was carrying… yet he only halfway did. After all, how were you supposed to feel when you got a thirteen year old pregnant, regardless of her marital status?

Either way, he didn't want to upset Lei or make her feel slighted – he had worked very hard to make her feel like the two of them had a marriage that was equal to his marriages to his other wives, and he didn't want an unborn child to be what crumbled that. So he put aside his misgivings, stretched a smile across his face, and pulled his youngest wife in for a kiss.

He waited for a couple of days after that, knowing who he wanted to talk to about Lei's expectant state and how he ought to go about it. Since Ella and Ava were so impenetrably close, Cambria had taken Lei under her wing and they had become rather unlikely best friends – sisters in their own right and in their own way.

So on May fourteenth, Rowan went into Cambria's bedroom, fully intending to find out if the girl with honey-colored orbs knew about Lei's condition. But that was not to be.

They had just turned out the lights and slid underneath the covers, and once Cambria wriggled around for a moment to find a comfortable spot in the bed, she spoke before he could bring Lei up. The three straightforward words breathed life into the black air, tickling his neck from where her head was leaned over on his shoulder.

"Rowan, I'm pregnant."

Out of all of his wives, Cambria was the only one who still clung – at least a little – to the idea of having an even halfway platonic relationship with him, and as a byproduct of that, she didn't show him half as many emotions as his other wives did. This was no different; she just said it, blurted it out flatly and factually, and so Rowan didn't show much emotion either – maybe frustration or discouragement if anything.

He sighed before kissing the top of her head. "Alright."

"You're not angry, are you?"

Rowan laughed airily, staring up at the ceiling. "No, I'm not mad. Why do you women always think that I'm going to be mad?"

"Because you were thrown so off kilter when you and Ella took over guardianship of Frankie."

"And now I love him like a son."

"So, if you're not mad, then what are you?"

Rowan sighed again, murmuring, "Terrified."

"You're a good dad, Rowan. You'll be fine."

"Four kids within one year? That's not my definition of fine; that's my definition of crazy."

Cambria didn't say anything, and he peered through the darkness down at her face to see her smirking like something was funny.

"What?" he asked warily.

"Nothing," Cambria said. "I just wouldn't start whining quite yet – not until you've talked to Ella."

"Ella?" Rowan repeated. "Why Ella?"

"I'm not saying anything I haven't gotten verified," Cambria said, still smiling as she rolled over, putting her back to him as she finished, "Good night, Rowan; go to sleep."

Rowan snorted, knowing the likelihood of that happening – or lack thereof – but he obediently closed his eyes and eventually nodded off to sleep, putting Cambria's comment out of his mind for a couple more days.

He remembered it only when he was in Ella's room on his next night with her, sitting on the opposite side of the bed as she was while she brushed her long, brunette hair.

"So, "Rowan said flippantly, joking, "It's your turn to tell me now, right? You can go ahead; I'm ready for it."

"For what?" Ella asked looking at him in confusion as she curled up on the bed.

"For you to tell me that you're going to have a baby."

Ella's eyes widened and her mouth gaped for a moment before she asked in surprise, "Who told you?"

"What?" Rowan asked, paling. "I was only kidding. I thought that you… couldn't…"

"I thought so too," Ella grinned. "So did Ava and Jenna. But I think that we were wrong. I'm only a month along if at all, but still… a baby! A real baby of my own! Not that Frankie isn't my son, but still… this is different." Her tone changed as she noticed that he didn't seem happy, and she ventured softly, "It's what I've always wanted, Rowan."

"I know," he murmured.

"But you don't like it," Ella said flatly, the pain evident in her dark expression.

"Ella," Rowan said incredulously, reaching for her hand across the bed. "All four of you are pregnant; do you realize that? I didn't think that was even possible – having four wives pregnant at once – not for someone like me anyway. How are we even supposed to take care of that many children? It can't happen on what Cambria and Lei are making now; we're barely making ends meet as it is."

"Just tell me that you're happy for us," Ella begged pitifully.

"I am happy," Rowan whispered, leaning over to kiss her. "I'm just worried about how we're going to make this work."

"We'll find a way," Ella assured.

But no one would've thought that the problem might be solved in the way that it was.

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******I know that all these kids coming is a little irregular, if not impossible, but my muse has decided not to register that fact and I just went with it. **Hopefully you enjoyed this! Reviews make my day, if you feel so inclined to drop me one! Thanks!:)


	23. Chapter 23

It was late… ridiculously late… too late for them to be out safely. Cambria and Lei should have come back from working as servers at some expo at least an hour ago, but they hadn't. It made Rowan nervous enough that his two least street smart wives sometimes worked as late as half after ten, but now it was hedging on midnight, and they still hadn't returned to the apartment.

They were both only two weeks away from giving birth – a fact that had made Rowan try very hard for at least the past two weeks to get them to take off of work until the babies were born, though they had both ignored his concerns, citing the financial impossibility of not working. It was also now mid-December which meant they could be freezing to death somewhere since it was so cold, even if they city that they did live in Miami, Florida. All of these facts combined to leave Rowan in a near panic. He hadn't felt this way since his parents had died, or since Rhine had been snatched by the gatherers.

He sprung up from where he had been sitting on the loveseat beside Ava, looking at her and Ella who was sitting at the table with Frankie as he snatched up his thin coat and shrugged it on, saying, "I'm going out to look for them."

The two sisters looked at him nervously. He knew that both of them were already fretful due to Cambria and Lei's unexplained absence, so while he didn't know if it was a good idea to leave them in the apartment alone, he did know that he couldn't stand staying idly in the apartment for one more minute. He had to be out trying to find his wives.

"I'll come with you," Ella said as both girls stood up.

"No," Rowan said, shaking his head as he pulled on his shoes. "I don't want you two out this late. You need to be resting. Go to bed, and I'll come in and tell you when I get back with Cambria and Lei."

"What if you don't find them?" Ava asked softly.

"I will," Rowan promised, giving both girls a quick kiss and ruffling Frankie's hair before he flung open the door to the apartment… and almost ran into Cambria and Lei.

He was in the middle of muttering a hasty apology when it registered who they were. Cambria and Lei didn't seem to notice him though. Their eyes were bright with excitement as they pushed their way past him and into the apartment, talking rapidly over one another. When Ella and Ava started exclaiming over their sister wives' safe return home, Rowan lost the ability to hear himself think.

"Hey!" he finally yelled over their chatter, trying to regain some semblance of order over the scene. The girls all four stopped jabbering and turned to him. "Cambria, Lei, are you guys okay?"

"Yeah," Cambria answered, her expression still bright with excitement. "Better then okay. You'll never guess who we saw at the expo tonight!"

Rowan raised his eyebrow, opening his mouth to answer, but Lei spoke before he could, looking as excited as Cambria, if not more so.

"It was Rhine!"

Rowan paled, feeling the strength rush from his body as he groped behind him until he located a chair back to grab onto. "Are you sure? How can you be so sure?"

"I saw her myself!" Lei said, and Rowan got the feeling that she would've been bouncing on her toes had she not been weighed down by the enormous balloon of her swollen belly. "I wasn't sure at first, so I walked right up to her with a tray of éclairs, and she looked me right in the eyes. Her eyes are just like yours-"

"Heterochromic," Cambria supplied. "And she has blonde hair."

"All sorts of colors of blonde," Lei added. "And she's your age. It has to be her; I just know it is."

"After all," Cambria reasoned, "Who else has eyes like yours except for your sister?"

Both girls seemed to be calming down as Lei added hesitantly, "And…" she looked at Cambria, the words stalling on her tongue.

"The man that she was with…" Cambria supplemented.

"You recognized him?" Ella guessed.

Both Cambria and Lei shook their heads solemnly.

"Yeah," Cambria said.

Lei murmured, "I think so."

"What about Jenna?" Ella asked, almost hesitantly.

"We looked and we didn't see her," Cambria said.

Lei asked hopefully, as if she were trying to give Jenna's sister a ray of hope, "But where there's Rhine, there must be Jenna nearby, right?"

Rowan nodded slowly, admitting, "The chances are high, yes."

"So where do we find them?" Ella asked, suddenly impatient.

"That's the thing," Cambria said hesitantly. "That's why Lei and I were so late in getting back here. We trailed the limousine back to the estate, but there was absolutely no way for us to get anywhere beyond the gates of the place – believe us; we looked."

"Why don't we just go back there and demand to see the god-forsaken man?" Rowan asked, as impatient as Ella.

Cambria had apparently appointed herself as the voice of reason in this conversation, saying, "Because it's an hour away from here – well outside of the city – and no one who wants anything from anybody shows up at that person's doorstep at one in the morning, certainly not a stranger's."

"Do I look like I care if I have to fight people off right now to get to those girls?" Rowan snapped.

"They're worth fighting for," Ella said, backing him up.

"I'm not saying that they aren't," Cambria calmly assured her husband and sister wife. "I'm just saying that there are better ways to go about getting them back other then fighting our way past their husband."

"Like what?" Ava finally spoke up.

"Like waiting until tomorrow morning," Cambria supplied.

Rowan sighed painfully, seeing the logical common sense in what she was saying. "Alright," he decided with finality. "We wait until tomorrow morning."

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	24. Chapter 24

**I warn you now: as a part of the AU-ness of this story, Gabriel doesn't exist, which makes this story have Rhine/Linden tendencies, along with Linden having at least semi-healthy relationships with both Jenna and Cecily.**

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It struck Rowan while he was standing outside of the truck at six o'clock the next morning, glaring heatedly at the man on the other side of those wrought iron gates, how odd and unassuming his company must look. A ten-month-old baby, four very pregnant teenage girls, and the girls' husband. No wonder the first generation on the other side of the gate wasn't about to let them in.

"Please," Ella finally broke into the argument that Rowan had been having with the man. "We just need to see a couple of the house master's wives."

"The house master's dead," the first generation said bluntly. "And he hasn't had a wife in over twenty years."

"What?" Lei spoke up. "The house master isn't a first generation, and we saw him just last night at the expo that he went to."

"The house master _was _a first generation – which you would know if you were close enough to him for me to let you into his house at six in the morning."

"We don't want to see the house master;" Rowan snarled impatiently, stepping right up to the gate. "We. Want. To. See. His. _Wives._"

The servant opened his mouth to answer again, but closed it and narrowed his eyes, staring intently at Rowan's face.

His eyes, Rowan realized. They were just like Rhine's. Why hadn't he thought of that before?

"Which wives did you say you wanted to see?" the first generation asked.

"Rhine and Jenna."

The man stared at them all for a little longer and then came to a decision, opening the gates and ushering them in as he said, "Come with me; I'll let you talk to the new house master, and he can decide whether or not you get to see his wives."

"Thank you," Ava breathed.

As they all stepped through the gate, Ava grabbed one of his hands and Ella grasped the other, propping Frankie on her hip. The first generation ushered them into the foyer and waved over one of the few attendants that were already up and about, whispering something in her ear and then rushing off to an elevator while the second servant stayed with them. Even being as strung out as they all were, the five teenagers couldn't help but be a little awed by the opulence that they saw around them, especially considered the bare apartment that they had lived in for the better part of a year. Lei seemed as mesmerized by the chandelier in the entryway as Frankie was.

A few minutes later, the servant from the gate came back out of the elevator behind a man with disheveled black hair who was wearing a housecoat. Rowan heard Ava gasp, and he instinctually beckoned all four of his wives closer to him. In their eyes – and in his – this was the man who had thrown their lives into horrific upheaval.

"Who are you?" the man asked, looking somewhere between irritated, confused, and curious.

"Rowan Ellery. Who are you?"

"Linden Ashby. Can I ask why exactly you were standing on my doorstep at six in the morning?"

"We want to see Rhine and Jenna."

"Right now?" Linden asked with a disbelieving laugh.

"We haven't seen them or had any contact with them since February, and it's important that we reunite with them."

"February?" Linden repeated, his eyes narrowing a little as he worked a theory out in his mind. He stilled before beckoning them towards a sitting room off the foyer. "Please, let's talk somewhere a little more private." He followed them into the sitting room and gestured for them to sit at various points around the room before closing the door securely behind them all. Turning back to face them, Linden Ashby asked without preamble, and a little harshly, "Who _are you_?"

"Rowan Ellery," Rowan repeated, watching the older man as he sat slowly in a chair. "These are my wives – Ella and Ava Bloom, and Cambria and Lei – and my adopted son, Frankie."

"How do you know my Rhine and Jenna?"

Rowan's jaw ticked at what he knew was very deliberate wording. Linden Ashby was laying claim to the two girls, no matter how subtly.

"They're relations of my family," Rowan revealed carefully.

Linden's eyes narrowed again as he looked at Rowan's eyes. "Rhine's your sister," Linden guessed. "But you're too close in age for that… or was your family a polygamous one?"

Rowan said tensely, "We're twins."

Surprise and hurt shot through Linden's eyes as he swallowed, letting his guard down a little as he looked away and revealed, "I never knew that they had any family." He cleared his throat, looking Rowan in the eye again, once more all business. "But how do I know that you aren't lying?"

"Why would we lie about this?" Rowan asked incredulously. "Just let Rhine and Jenna catch sight of us – just see us – and I swear that you would know we're telling the truth."

Linden mulled this over for a minute before he pushed himself onto his feet and opened the sitting room door. An attendant nearly landed on him, having obviously been listening in, although Linden didn't seem to notice.

The young girl flushed a deep red, but Linden didn't seem to notice as he ordered her, "Bring Lady Cecily here."

The poor girl went from flushed to pale as she repeated slowly, "You want me to go wake Lady Cecily… at six o'clock in the morning… and bring her in to see visitors?"

"Now, please," Linden snapped impatiently. He cocked his head to the side, saying drily, "That would be a sufficient punishment for eavesdropping, don't you think?"

"But, Governor," the girl tried feebly, "What about the baby? I thought that Lady Cecily needed her rest."

"_I _need Lady Cecily – right now," Linden said, starting to lose his patience with the child. "Go. Get. Her. _Now_."

A terrified whimper escaped the girl's lips as she turned away to do the house master's bidding.

Linden turned back to them with a weary sigh, raking a hand through his tousled curls as he apologized, "I'm sorry; I'm not usually like this at all. I assume that you heard that my father's just died, and I'm not yet quite used to having so much fall on me personally concerning the running of the household. It's just been difficult for me without him here… strange."

"We're sorry for your loss," Ava said politely, carefully asking, "How did he die?"

Linden cringed. "My wife, Cecily, is expecting. At thirteen, she was terrified the first time she had Braxton-Hicks. My father, who was a great doctor and scientist, tried to give her something to help her with the pain, and in her delirium, she somehow got hold of a knife and stabbed him." Seeing the horrified expressions of his guests, Linden hurried to assure them, "She was just so out of it from the pain and fear that she didn't know what she was doing. It was an accident, and I don't hold it against her."

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	25. Chapter 25

"Are you talking about me again?" a sleepy, irritated voice asked from the doorway. "And what's on fire that I have to be out of bed at this ungodly hour?"

Rowan turned to see a tiny slip of a girl with wild red hair and a huge stomach standing in the doorway, glaring at Linden – or it might have been a glare, had her eyes not been so glazed by sleep and masked by red ringlets.

"Ah, Cecily," Linden said brightly, going to wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her further into the room while tucking her hair back behind her ears. "I was telling them about my father's accident, yes."

In her tired state, Rowan noticed _something_ – but he couldn't decide what – flash through Lady Cecily Ashby's eyes as she glanced away from her husband, muttering something about how tragic it had been.

"Anyway, love, I need to ask you something about Jenna and Rhine," Linden said cheerfully, guiding Cecily into the chair that he had just vacated, taking her hands in his as he knelt before her.

"What?" Cecily yawned.

"Did they ever mention having any siblings?"

Rowan glowered at the back of Linden's head as Cecily answered innocently, "Jenna never talks about life before here; it makes her sad, I think."

That made sense, Rowan reasoned, considering the fact that to the best of Jenna's knowledge her sisters had died in the back of that gatherers vehicle.

"Why couldn't this wait another hour or two?" Cecily complained.

Linden ignored her question, posing one of his own instead, "What about Rhine?"

"Nuh-uh," Cecily said, shaking her head. "The closest thing she does to that is tell me stories about…" Cecily's eyes rose slowly from Linden's to Rowan's as she finished slowly while it dawned on her, "a set of twins." Her eyes darted back to Linden's as Cecily demanded, "Linden, what's going on?"

"I'm not sure," Linden admitted with a sigh.

"Mrs. Ashby," Rowan spoke up softly, realizing that if he could get Cecily to believe him, her husband would cave in as well. He spoke carefully, hoping that something he said might strike a chord in the girl's memory. "My name is Rowan Ellery. I have a twin sister – that would be Rhine. I'd be willing to bet that the twins in her stories are her and I. Our parents died in a laboratory explosion when we were ten. Before that… my mother grew flowers in front of our house, my father played the piano…" Rowan was scrambling now to dredge up memories that he knew that Rhine had immersed herself in just as much as he had tried to forget them. "My mother had a necklace with a globe on the end of it, and during the solstice, my father would play songs on our piano that he called Christmas carols. One time, our parents made a carnival in our house – decorated the whole place and made a cake for Rhine and I just so we could get a taste of what a real carnival was like."

Cecily was nodding rapidly now, fully convinced. "That's right!" she said excitedly, suddenly jumping up out of her chair.

Linden almost toppled over in front of her, but caught himself, trying to get her to sit back down as he said, "Now, Cecily, don't get yourself worked up, love. Think about the baby."

"Oh, shut up!" Cecily snapped, pushing him away as she began to yell, "I'm fine, and so is the baby, and this – Rowan – is saying the first piece of truth that I've heard ever since I was brought to this place!"

"The sitting room?" Linden asked stupidly, looking entirely lost.

"Do you even know what a gatherer _is_?" Cecily screamed at him suddenly.

"A what?"

It was then that Rowan realized that there had been a story all its own unfolding here while he had been looking for Rhine and Jenna. How could this man not know what service – what very, very prevalent service – had been used to bring his wives to him?

"A gatherer! They trick girls, grab them off of the streets, drug them, and stuff them in the backs of horrid, pitch black trucks for hours on end and then – if you're lucky – they sell you off! If not, they do the same thing to you that I did to Vaughn!"

"Cecily, _calm down_! You _have _to think about the baby!" Linden begged, looking reasonably worried now. "And what do these 'gatherers' have to do with anything?"

Cecily opened her mouth, looking fully ready to scream at her confused husband again, when Ella shoved Frankie into Ava's arms and stepped forward, putting her hands on Cecily's shoulders soothingly, saying, "It's alright, Cecily, we can explain the gatherers to him. He really doesn't know, does he?"

Cecily shook her head, suddenly falling wearily into the chair behind her. "It's all Vaughn's fault. He lied to him all the time to keep him here and 'safe' under his thumb. He never told him anything that was the truth. We've all tried to tell him so, but he won't believe us. Maybe you can convince him."

"Gatherers," Rowan said carefully, "Are exactly what you're wife just told you they are. They grabbed her, Rhine, Jenna, and every one of my wives. Every one of the girls who were in that lineup that you chose your brides from had been kidnapped by gatherers and driven to Florida all the way from New York."

"You don't know that," Linden said weakly, looking unreasonably afraid as he stumbled and fell back into a chair beside Cecily.

"I do know that," Rowan rebutted, suddenly feeling patient pity for this man. "Because I followed that very vehicle here in an effort to get my sister back. My wives and I have been in this city since March looking for Rhine and Jenna. Last night, two of my wives saw Rhine with you at an expo and followed you back here to your estate."

"You cannot prove that," Linden said fiercely. "You cannot prove that you are who you say you are."

"Look at his eyes, Linden!" Cecily cried in exasperation. "You know Rhine's the only other person anywhere with eyes like that! You _know _that he's telling you the truth!"

Linden bit his cheek in an effort to keep his lips from trembling as he whispered brokenly, "It's all true, isn't it?" He looked at Cecily with wide eyes, suddenly seeming more childlike than she ever could have. "Everything that you and Jenna and Rhine have tried to tell me about the world?" His voice broke on the words, "Even about my father."

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	26. Chapter 26

"I'm sorry, Linden," Cecily murmured, already scooting her chair closer and reaching for her husband while she nodded her head. "So sorry."

He buried his face in her tiny shoulder and wept. Rowan got the feeling that his family had just intruded upon an entirely too private moment for this man, all the while wondering just what sort of a man Linden Ashby's father had been. If he hadn't wanted so badly to believe better, he would've guessed that the flame-haired young mother had killed her father-in-law for some reason.

After a time, Linden collected himself and for well over the next hour, the seven of them stayed in that small sitting room with the door closed, explaining the situation with Rhine, Rowan, Jenna, her sisters, and the grand scheme of the real world in general to a stunned but believing Linden Ashby.

"Linden," Cecily said suddenly, sounding mildly alarmed as she noticed the clock on the mantel. "We're supposed to be in the dining room for breakfast in twenty minutes!"

Rowan stiffened, suddenly remembering his family's purpose in being here, which he had somehow managed to forget for the time being.

"You'll stay for breakfast, won't you?" Linden asked Rowan as he stood up. "All three of my wives will be there."

This time his voice held no undercurrent as he called them his own, and Rowan nodded, his heart rate picking up monumentally at the idea of seeing Rhine again.

"We'll have to find you all something else to wear, of course," Cecily said, suddenly looking excited at the prospect of it all.

"In twenty minutes?" Linden asked skeptically.

"Of course," Cecily said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Why else do we keep a billion servants on staff around here?"

The little redhead strode over to a speaker mechanism and ordered that at least ten attendants come to her suite on the wives' floor to help her and "some guests" get ready for breakfast. "And bring a nurse to take care of their baby."Her eyes now glittering, Cecily grabbed Lei's hand and half dragged her out of the room, starting to chatter away about finally finding people who "understood what this baby is putting me through."

Despite the fact that he looked years older than he had when he had found Rowan and his family standing in his foyer, Linden chuckled to himself at his youngest wife's unbridled exuberance. "She's so young – I realize that now – but she really is one of my favorite people," he murmured.

Rowan laughed out loud when Lei turned to look at him over her shoulder, her smile wide and her eyes sparkling with childish excitement as she went off hand in hand with Cecily. "I understand completely."

"So," Linden asked, clapping him on the back. "How about we get you all spruced up for your girls? I think you all deserve it after the year that it sounds like you've had." Rowan almost curled his nose up at the idea of wearing something that was as fancy as this man's house, and Linden saw it, laughing as he promised, "Don't worry; I'll tell the attendants to be kind to you."

And that was how, within the promised twenty minutes later, Rowan found himself standing in the hallway outside the dining room. While the blue dress shirt that he was wearing was clean, pressed, and well cared for, it wasn't anything fancy, for which he was grateful. His wives left him a little stunned, though, as they came out of the elevator one by one. Each of them was wearing a pretty sundress in a bright color that rivaled their nervously excited smiles. Green for Ella, purple for Cambria, blue for Ava, and yellow for Lei.

"Did Rhine or Jenna see you?" Cecily asked Linden in a whisper.

"No, love, we were on another floor entirely," Linden answered patiently. "The better question is if they caught sight of any of you."

Cecily shook her head merrily. This had obviously been the most fun that she'd had in months. "No, we were careful. Jenna and Rhine are already in there," she said, taking her husband's hand and tugging him into the dining room. "So come on."

With a little coaxing, the girls had managed to convince their sorely outnumbered husbands that it would be fun to bring their guests in one or two at a time, revealing the pieces of the puzzle a little at a time. Somehow within the short amount of time that they'd had, someone had even strung up a small camera inconspicuously in the corner of the dining room so that those that were still in hiding could see what was going on in the dining room.

Rowan got his first good look at Jenna when Linden went over to the willowy brunette's chair and gave her a light kiss, saying, "Good morning, honey."

"Good morning," Jenna answered with a smile.

And then there she was. As he focused on her – on the first glimpse of his sister that he had gotten since February – Rowan stopped breathing for a moment. When Linden gave her a kiss of her own and a "good morning, sweetheart," Rhine smiled at him, her gaze loving, but there was something sad in her eyes, and Linden caught it too, asking as he sat down at the head of the table, "Are you alright, Rhine?"

"Yeah," Rhine nodded, allowing her smile to falter a little as she answered, "I guess I'm just a little tired from the expo last night."

Liar. Rowan knew his sister was lying, Linden knew it, and Cecily obviously knew it as well.

"Are you sure that's all that there is to it?" Cecily probed. "Because it is getting close to the solstice, and if there's ever going to be a time to miss any family that you might have left behind in marrying our husband, now would be the time for that to happen."

Rhine looked at her sister wife in alarm, as did Linden and Jenna, and that's when Rowan knew that Cecily had just hit the nail right on the head. Rhine was missing him. He grinned to himself. Little did she know...

Linden cleared his throat after a pause, saying, "Well, we've got some guests joining us for the day; maybe that will get your mind off of your nostalgia for a little while." Then, just like they had all planned, Linden said, "And here come two of his wives now."

Cambria and Lei took that as their cue, stepping into the dining room.

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	27. Chapter 27

Rowan watched with Ella and Ava as Cambria and Lei walked into the dining room, calmly sitting down in two of the four seats at the table that were across from Linden's three wives. Linden initiated a round of introductions for Rhine and Jenna's sake, saying that Cecily had already met them earlier in the day.

"Was that the racket we heard before breakfast?" Jenna asked, her tone making the question more conversational than it might have otherwise been taken.

"Part of it," Cecily said with a small smile.

Even Rowan could tell that the redhead was having a hard time keeping the secret of who else was waiting in the hallway.

"We're sorry if we disturbed you," Cambria said, putting on the perfect airs to convincingly be a rich man's friendly wife. "Our husband has two more wives besides Lei and myself, and I'm afraid that we made a lot of noise between the five of us girls and the son of one of my sister wives."

"That's just fine; I was already awake," Jenna brushed off the apology easily.

"Are they all here with you?" Rhine asked conversationally, totally suspecting nothing.

"Yes," Lei said while that innocently sneaky grin that Rowan had learned to love so much snuck its way across her face. "As a matter of fact, here come our sister wives now."

Rowan absently ran a hand along Ella's spine as she stood with Frankie in her arms and followed Ava into the dining room. He leaned forward in his chair, watching in anticipation as his other two wives kept their heads down, doing a perfect job of hiding their faces as they sat down in the other two chairs beside Lei and Cambria.

"This is…" Linden started, then paused, lying, "Oh, I'm sorry, ladies; I've forgotten your names already."

"Ella," the girl in question said, already grinning as she lifted her head, letting her hair fall away from her face as she kept her sparkling blue eyes trained on Jenna.

"And Ava," the youngest Bloom sister said, doing the same as Ella – even wearing the same cloud nine expression.

Silence reigned for a long moment before Jenna simply burst into tears. This apparently shocked her two sisters, and they immediately got up, going around the table to wrap her in a hug between the two of them, sandwiching Frankie in the middle with Jenna, as all three girls were soon reduced to tears. After a long minute, Frankie began to squirm in Ella's arms, and eventually he screamed impatiently, breaking up the sisters' hug.

Ella and Ava both took a step back from Jenna as they all collected themselves, wiping away tears from six huge, joy-filled, red-rimmed eyes.

"What?" Jenna eventually croaked. "How? I thought you were dead!"

"We would have been," Ava said with a watery smile. "Were it not for our husband."

Ella took up the story there, further explaining, "He saw that the gatherers were killing the girls that hadn't been chosen, and he bought the ten of us that were still alive."

"So this guy has ten wives?" Rhine asked incredulously. "All the rest of you girls from the truck?"

"No," Ella said, shaking her head. "He gave us all the option to leave whenever we wanted, and we were the only four who ended up staying with him long term. Beyond that, it's a long story."

"Oh, we'll make time for it," Jenna said surely, before asking as she ruffled Frankie's blonde hair, "And who's this little guy?"

"This is mine and my husband's adopted son, Francis – everybody calls him Frankie. His biological mom is one of the other girls the gatherers got, but she died of the virus a little over a week after he was born, and she basically gave him to R- our husband to raise." At the mention of the virus, an almost guilty flicker seemed to come over Linden and his wives, but Rowan's own brides didn't notice. "Since I didn't think that I could have children, I volunteered to be his mother."

"Well, obviously you can!" Jenna said, looking appreciatively at both her sisters' pregnant stomachs. "So I take it congratulations are in order?"

"They are," Ava said with a bright smile.

"So, when are you due?" Jenna practically squealed.

Ava laughed, saying hesitantly, "Next week."

"What? And you're still standing? Sit down, you!" Jenna ordered pointing commandingly to the chair that Ava had previously vacated.

Rowan laughed silently, already appreciating the part of Jenna Ashby that was a big sister.

"How about you?" Jenna asked Ella, really squealing this time.

Anyone who knew Jenna seemed to be in a mild state of shock over all of giddy squealing and general acting like a little girl that she was doing.

"Sometime in February," Ella grinned.

Jenna nodded, gesturing towards Ella's chair and waiting until Ella had obediently reclaimed her seat before asking, "So, tell me about this wonderful husband of yours. I want to know all about this wonderful person who saved your lives."

"Well," Cambria said. "The story really does get much more interesting if he's here to help us tell it."

"Would you like to meet him?" Lei said, barely keeping a hold on her excitement.

Jenna shrugged, agreeing, "Sure."

Rowan took a deep breath to calm, his heart rate, turned off the television that he had been watching the scene in the other room on, stood up, and went to stand in the dining room doorway, where the backs of Linden's brides were now turned to him.

"Sorry I'm late," he said inconspicuously, making his way towards the seat that remained for him at the end of the table.

"That's alright," Linden said with a cheerful smile. "We've been well entertained this morning, isn't that right, Rhine? Rhine? Say something, sweetheart."

Rowan looked straight at her then, finding his stare being returned rather comically. His sister sat there, still as a statue, staring at him. Really staring – bug eyes, open mouth, not breathing, whole nine yards.

A smirk played about Rowan's features as he leaned across the table around Cecily, saying, "Rhine? Are you okay there, sis?" as he laid a hand on her wrist.

His touch seemed to be the breath of life that she needed, and before he could register her movement, she had screamed and propelled herself into his arms.

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	28. Chapter 28

Rowan laughed out loud as he wrapped his arms tightly around his twin's waist, not even caring that she was about to cut off his air supply. Okay, so maybe he should care…

"Hey, sis," he said, his voice high, as he tapped her back lightly. "I gotta breath, Rhine… Air… World… going dark," he coughed dramatically, knowing that the fact that he was making a joke was likely to send somebody in the room – or a few people – into shock or labor, either one was likely enough after this morning.

Rhine jumped back from him, and then slapped him lightly on the arm, tears still sliding down her cheeks. Only when he laughed did Rowan realize that he, too, was crying.

"You're fine," Rhine protested, too choked up to better defend herself.

"You're absolutely right," Rowan said with another laugh, looping an arm around her waist just to make sure that she was solid, and here, and right beside him, and not a figment of his imagination like she had been so much in the past year. "I'm better then fine. This is one of the best moments of my year, actually."

Rhine laughed giddily, ordering Cecily to "scoot over" into Rhine's seat so that the twins could sit by one another.

Once they were all once again sitting down and relatively settled down, Rhine turned to Ella and Ava and asked, "You two are Jenna's sisters, right?"

Ava nodded.

"And you're Rowan's sister," Ella reciprocated.

Rhine nodded, grinning ridiculously at that statement, before Jenna burst out, "Wait just a second! I knew it!" she crowed, turning to Rhine. "I knew that those twin stories weren't fiction!"

Rhine grinned guiltily, before defending herself by saying, "Well, it's not like you or Cecily ever talked about your families either!" Rhine froze, saying slowly as she turned back to Rowan, "Hold on… Family?" Rowan didn't understand what his twin meant until she gestured to his wives lined up along one side of the table, clarifying as if in mild shock, "All of them are your family?"

Rowan nodded slowly, not bothering to hide his smile. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Pro-naturalists such as what he claimed to be believed that the human raise deserved to die out; they didn't go around marrying multiple women and impregnating every one of them. But then again, his wives had drilled a good dose of hope into him over the past months, and, truth be told, he didn't know if he would identify himself as a pro-naturalist anymore if anyone asked him.

"You're even a _father_?"

"I am," Rowan said with a proud grin in Frankie's direction. "And, believe it or not, I've grown to love it."

"You've turned into a family man," Rhine realized, shock that was only halfway dramatized making its way into her voice and expression.

Rowan shrugged, not about to deny it, since it was pretty obvious that it was true. "These past ten months have changed me a lot, Rhine – changed all of us in one way or another, I'd be willing to bet."

"It's true," Linden acknowledged. "And I think the plan of attack for today sounds like getting to know one another – for the first time and all over again – am I right?"

So that's what they did that day. The two husbands and all of their wives stayed mostly holed up in the sitting room on the wives' floor, unwilling to wander the extensive grounds in the middle of December. It was nine in the evening before anyone even thought to excuse themselves from the gathering.

Rhine and Linden were the first to go.

"Alright," Rhine said, standing languidly to her feet from where she had been sitting beside Rowan on the floor. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm about asleep on my feet, so I think that I'm going to go off to bed now."

"'Night, sis," Rowan said.

His gaze switched from his sister to his brother-in-law, who had been sitting on the floor on Rhine's other side, in time to catch the heat that started climbing into the other man's cheeks. Linden did a double take in Rowan's direction, realizing that he was being watched. Rowan arched his eyebrow in a silent question that he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to. Linden colored all the more and looked down at his lap before jumping up onto his own feet in one surprisingly fluid movement.

"I think I'm going to sleep too."

Cecily waited until the door had closed behind both Rhine and Linden before she said, looking pointedly at Jenna, "That wasn't suspicious at all..."

"I know, right?" Jenna said, scrambling to her feet and cracking open the sitting room door to peer out into the hallway. "Yup; that's what I thought."

"What?" Cecily demanded.

"They're finally going to do it," Jenna said with a knowing smile as she shut the door and turned back to the occupants of the room.

"How do you know?" Cecily asked.

"Didn't you notice how she pulled him aside after supper and they had this weird conversation that none of the rest of us could hear but made him blush like crazy?"

Rowan started begging the floor to swallow him as he fumbled onto his feet and started edging towards the door.

"Yeah, but it's not like you don't know what she wants to talk to him about," Cecily said cryptically.

At that, Rowan paused, having been long forgotten by the six teenage girls in the room.

"Yes… I know that," Jenna nodded. "But I also think that Rowan's finding her has made her very, very happy – not to mention severed the last reason why she might still want to leave Linden – and that fact, I have a feeling, is going to make Linden very, very, _very _happy tonight."

Rowan started towards the door again, trying to decide how best to get past Jenna when Ella looked over at her older sister and asked cheekily, "So, when were you going to tell us that I wasn't the only one of us who had lost her fertility issues?"

"What?" Cecily screamed happily.

"Shh!" Jenna demanded, blushing happily as she slapped a hand over Cecily's mouth and hissed, "I haven't told Linden yet, and don't any of you dare do it for me! I'm going to tell him sometime this week."

"I'm going now!" Rowan called out as he opened the sitting room door.

As he had intended, the sound of feminine laughter followed him out the door.

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	29. Chapter 29

Rowan didn't mean to try to form an opinion on the subject – he really, _really _didn't – but as it was, he had a feeling that Jenna had been right about what had happened between his sister and her husband the night before. There was just something _different _between them – and whatever it was, they were both happy about it.

But whatever that something might have been, it was soon forgotten by the things that Linden told Rowan and his wives at the breakfast table on their second day at the Ashby estate after the meal had been cleared away by attendants.

"So," Linden said with a smile. "I have been willingly persuaded by three ladies – whose names I'm sure you can't guess – to ask, Rowan, that you and your family to stay here and live with my wives and me. I think it's a great idea; it's not like this house isn't big enough for all of us."

"Even with all of the expanding that those two families are about to start doing?"

Linden nodded, adding with a grin, "You don't understand my own selfish reasons for asking, Rowan. I _need _another male presence in this place."

His wife nearest him, Jenna, shoved his arm, to which Linden's smile just broadened.

Rowan scanned the faces of his wives, registering the agreement – even eagerness – on each of their faces before he nodded, smiling himself. "Alright, then; how can you argue with logic like that – completely understandable logic, I might add."

"You may not!" Ella objected, ordering, "Hit him for me, will you, Lei?"

Rowan's youngest wife instantly complied, but Rowan only egged them on, saying, "See, this is why Linden and I need men around."

"Without them life would be unbearable," Linden agreed with a straight-faced nod.

"Speaking of life…" Jenna drawled, looking at Linden through her eyelashes. "…I'm pregnant."

Rowan watched, smiling along with everyone else at Linden's ecstatic reaction.

Once they had all calmed down, it was Cambria who broke the cheerful mood by asking carefully, "Are you going to have time to carry the baby to term?"

The whole table seemed to draw a collective breath.

Linden let his out first, saying slowly, "About that… Do you remember how I said that my father was a geneticist?" Rowan and all four of his wives nodded, and Linden continued, "Alright. Now, what I'm going to tell you has to be kept under the strictest secrecy, are we clear?" Again, the five teenagers nodded. Linden swallowed before he kept going, saying, "In the month before he died, my father… he produced an antidote."

"By now, everyone's produced an antidote at one time or another," Ava said softly.

"Yes, I know," Linden said patiently. "But this one works – really works. He found a universal cure."

"Is that true?" Rowan asked his Rhine.

His sister nodded solemnly, backing her husband up by saying, "All of us have already taken it – everyone on the estate – even Cecily, since it can be taken even if you're pregnant."

"How do you know that?" Rowan asked Linden skeptically.

"While he was double-checking it's safety, my father asked for volunteers from among the attendants, and he was able to cover all the possible bases that way."

"But if this was developed so recently, how do you know that it actually works?"

"He didn't officially verify it's capabilities until the week after my first wife's death, but apparently he had been working on getting it tested for about a year beforehand, which means that by now in my family's holdings elsewhere we now have living, healthy twenty-two year old women and twenty-seven year old men. I really do believe that this is the cure that everyone has been scrambling to find, and I want you all to take it."

Rowan sat back, his arms crossed over his chest, the very picture of distrust.

"Please, Rowan," Rhine put her hand on his arm, begging with tears in her eyes. "Even if it doesn't work, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? You die at twenty-five and your wives die at twenty. That's going to happen anyway!"

Rowan forced his eyes away from her, once again scanning the faces of his four wives to garner their reactions. "What do you guys think?"

"Are you sure it's safe to take while pregnant?" Ella asked Linden anxiously.

"I would have never even thought about giving it to Cecily yet if I'd had a single doubt in my mind," Linden answered patiently.

"What sort of a treatment is it?" Cambria asked him.

"That's part of the glory of it;" Linden said with a smile. "It's just one admittedly rather painful shot, but then that's it, and you're set for the rest of your life – that being the next eighty years, of course."

"Whose threshold of pain are we talking here," Rowan asked drolly.

Rhine rolled her eyes, admitting, "You would be fine."

Again, Rowan scanned his wives, looking for any sign that any of them were set against taking the cure.

It was Ella who spoke for all four of them when she said softly, cupping the bulge of their unborn child, "I want to be there to see my baby grow up, Rowan."

Rowan took a deep breath, turning to Linden to say, "Well, I guess it's decided then. When do we get our shots, Doc?"

"As soon as we can all get ready and loaded up into the limo," Linden answered with a smile as they all began to stand from the table.

"_Limousine_?" Lei repeated with wide eyes.

Linden smiled at her with a look that the loving father that she couldn't remember might have given her once upon a time. "Yes, limousine. And since you're part of my family, you get to ride in one of them for as long as you're alive."

"Don't worry," Cecily said, throwing an arm around Lei's shoulders in a show of camaraderie. "With eighty more years ahead of us both, I'll make sure you get used to living in the lap of luxury."

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	30. Chapter 30

Rowan was loathed to admit it, but the truth was that it wasn't that hard to get used to living in luxury either. As a matter of fact, it was ridiculously easy, especially since they were all surrounded by the glitter and good cheer of the impending solstice.

And then came the actual date of December twenty-fifth, and it turned out completely different than any of them had hoped for – except for maybe Ava. At the end of the day, though, both Rowan and Ava got the best gift they could imagine – the safe delivery of their son, Garrett.

Apparently, seeing Ava have her baby had inspired the others, because like clockwork after that, Cambria gave birth to Rowan's third son, Harlan, two days later on the twenty-eighth. Two days after being at Cambria's side, Rowan sat by his youngest wife, holding her hand and listening to her curse in the new year as she brought into the world Rowan's first daughter, Indira.

Somewhere in between all of this Ellery family chaos, Cecily had hers and Linden's son, Bowen, although it made Rowan dizzy trying to keep track of when exactly all of this had happened.

As luck would have it for him, though, most of his children were being born on holidays. His and Ella's daughter, Kristina, was even born on St. Valentine's Day. Long forgotten holiday that it was out in the "real world," it was a day that was celebrated on the Ashby estate, so Rowan figured that he could choose to let it count anyway.

Besides, Rowan figured that there wasn't a person in the mansion who – had they been there to see it – was going to forget the look on Linden's face at one point during that day. If nothing else, connecting that expression on that date with Kristina's birthday would be helpful, he decided.

"Look what I have…" Rowan called out, re-entering the crowded bedroom of one of his wives, like he had done three times previously by now.

He was instantly surrounded by women, oohing and aahing over the newborn that he held in his arms. Rowan smiled down at his baby girl along with the rest of them for a minute. After a moment, he flicked his eyes upward, intending to beckon Linden over, knowing full well that he wouldn't approach the mass that was their wives unless he was basically given permission.

Rowan had looked up just in time to see Rhine, in an out of the way corner of the room alone with Linden, whisper that familiar word softly enough that Rowan had to read her lips to catch it. As Rowan kept on watching, he saw Linden ask Rhine, "Are you sure?"

Rhine said something that Rowan could only figure out as being, "I double and triple checked. Yes, I'm sure."

Up until then, Rowan's poor sister had looked the same familiar sort of nervous that he had seen so many times in April and May, but when Linden smiled, Rhine started absolutely glowing. Linden caught his blonde wife up in arms and kissed her soundly as Rhine went so far as to wrap her legs around his waist – the greatest open display of affection that Rowan had seen from the couple.

"Hey!" Rowan called across the room with a wide grin, drawing attention to the duo in the corner. "Congratulations, you guys!"

Rhine blushed prettily and brushed strands of her hair back out of her eyes as Linden lowered her to the floor, looking as happy as her brother had ever seen her, and Linden wrapped an arm around her, pulling her even closer as he just kept beaming and said giddily, "Thanks."

"Congratulations on what?" Cecily asked in confusion, turning towards her husband and sister wife.

"Oh my gosh!" Jenna cried out – the first one of the women to realize what was going on. She pressed a hand to her heart, saying teasingly, "I thought that this day would never come."

"I haven't been the only one to have had that opinion in the past, remember?" Rhine pointed out with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, yeah," Jenna teasingly brushed her off. "I remember. So what?"

"_So what_'s going on?" Cecily repeated.

Rowan took pity on the little redhead, laying a hand on her shoulder to get her attention and whispering in her ear, "My sister is going to make me an uncle."

Cecily blinked once as she thought this over before she realized what he meant. She opened her mouth to let loose one of her incredibly shrill screams, but Lei acted faster, employing a hand to cover her new best friend's mouth with a panicked look in her eye.

"Don't you _dare _scream!" Lei hissed. "Look around you."

Cecily obediently obliged, taking in all of the infants as Cambria added, "It's like a minefield."Cambria continued, reminding Cecily of what they had all by now learned the hard way, "If you wake up even one of these babies, that baby will start screaming. That will wake up the rest of the tiny little munchkins, and then they will _all_ be screaming. And as much as we all love them, and as much as they really are ridiculously cute little munchkins, they are very, very, _very loud _little munchkins – especially when they join forces to raise the roof off of the rafters, which is what we do not want. So, _please_, do not scream."

Cecily nodded in agreement, so Lei carefully peeled her hand away from her friend's mouth.

"Oh, come on, guys," Ava said lightly. "It's not _that _bad."

By now, they all knew that it was, though.

"I guess it's not necessarily a _bad _thing," Rowan allowed carefully, bouncing his daughter in his arms as he moved so that he was sitting beside his wife with his back against the headboard of Ella's bed. "It's just… a fight to get – I don't know – _sleep _sometimes."

"But it's worth the fight, right?" Ava said, sitting down beside him as Ella leaned her head over on his shoulder and Cambria and Lei piled onto the bed as well to get another look at what they would consider their child as well.

"Right," Ella decided.

Rowan nodded, musing, "All the best things in life are worth fighting for, anyway."

"Like what things?" Lei asked innocently.

"Our children," Ella answered instantly.

"Our siblings," Ava said, catching Jenna's eye.

"Our marriages," Linden chimed in, glancing down at Rhine, who just buried her face in his shoulder as he kissed her on the top of the head.

Rowan took stock of what had just been listed, summing it up when he said, "Life. Our lives, on our terms, are worth fighting for."

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